Having thus acknowledged but in no way discharged a triple debt of gratitude, it will be next in order if I briefly state the history of the work which now appears in an English dress, before attempting to speak of its nature and value.

The publication of the maxims belongs to the later, that is to say, the last thirty, years of Goethe’s life; and the greater number of them appeared only in the last ten, while some are posthumous.

It is impossible to say with certainty at what period he began the observations which were afterwards to come before the world in this shape; nor is the question of any real interest except to pedantic students of such matters.  It is probable that, like most writers, Goethe was in the habit of noting transient thoughts of his own, as well as opinions of others that suggested more than they actually conveyed; and of preserving for further use what he had thus, in his own words, written himself and appropriated from elsewhere ­Eigenes and Angeeignetes.  The maxims grew out of a collection of this character.  It was a habit formed probably in early life, for somewhere in the Lehrjahre ­a work of eighteen years’ duration, but begun at the age of twenty-seven ­he makes Wilhelm Meister speak of the value of it.  But there are reasons for thinking that most of the maxims, as they now stand, were not alone published but also composed in his last years.  The unity of meaning which stamps them with a common aim; the similarity of the calm, dispassionate language in which they are written; the didactic tone that colours them throughout, combine to show that they are among the last and ripest fruits of his genius.  Some were certainly composed between the ages of fifty and sixty; more still between that and seventy; while there is evidence, both internal and external, proving that many and perhaps most of them were his final reflections on life and the world.  This it is that adds so much to their interest for as he himself finely says in one of the last of them, “in a tranquil mind thoughts rise up at the close of life hitherto unthinkable; like blessed inward voices alighting in glory on the summits of the past.”

But whenever all or any of them were written, and whatever revision they may have undergone, none were published until 1809, when Goethe was sixty years of age.  It was then that he brought out Die Wahlverwandschaften.  A few of the maxims on Life and Character were there inserted as forming two extracts from a journal often quoted in the earlier part of the story.  “About this time,” writes Goethe, as he introduces the first of these extracts, “outward events are seldomer noted in Ottilie’s diary, whilst maxims and sentences on life in general, and drawn from it, become more frequent.  But,” he adds, “as most of them can hardly be due to her own reflections, it is likely that some one had given her a book or paper, from which she wrote out anything that pleased her.”  A few more maxims appeared eight years later in Kunst and Alterthum, a magazine founded by Goethe in 1816 and devoted to the discussion of artistic questions; and a larger number first saw the light in the same publication at various dates until its extinction in 1828.  Some of the observations on Science had meanwhile been incorporated with two treatises on branches of that subject.

Eckermann tells a curious story of the way in which Goethe then continued the publication of the maxims. Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre had appeared in its first form in 1821.  Afterwards, in 1829, Goethe decided to remodel and lengthen it, and to make two volumes out of what had originally been only one.  His secretary was employed to copy it out in its revised form.  He wrote in a large hand, which gave the impression that the story might well fill even three volumes; and directions to this effect were sent to the publisher.  But it was soon discovered that the last two volumes would be very thin, and the publisher asked for more manuscript.  Goethe, in some perplexity, sent for Eckermann, and producing two large bundles of unpublished papers, containing, as he said, some very important things, ­“opinions on life, literature, science and art, all mingled together,” proposed to him to lengthen out the volumes by inserting selections from them.  “You might,” he suggested, “fill the gaps in the Wanderjahre by making up some six or eight sheets from these detached pieces.  Strictly speaking, they have nothing to do with the story; but we may justify the proceeding by the fact that I mention an archive in Makarie’s house, in which such miscellanies are preserved.  In this way we shall not only get over our difficulty, but find a good vehicle for giving much interesting matter to the world.”  Eckermann approved the plan, and divided his selection into two parts; and when the new edition of the Wanderjahre appeared, one of them was styled Aus Makariens Archiv, and the other Betrachtungen im Sinne der Wanderer:  Kunst, Ethisches, Natur.  The remainder of the unpublished maxims appeared posthumously, either in the Nachgelassene Werke in 1833, or in the quarto edition of 1836.

Instructions had been given to Eckermann to collect all the maxims, arrange them under different heads, and include them in appropriate volumes; but he resolved to deviate from his instructions to the extent of publishing them all together; and the alteration is certainly an advantage.  A slight re-arrangement was made by von Loeper, who was deterred from undertaking a more radical one, although he thought it might be done with profit, by the consideration that when a literary work of undesigned and fortuitous form has lived any number of years in a certain shape, that fact alone is a weighty argument against any change in it.  In a translation, perhaps, where the work is presented anew and to a fresh public, the change might be allowable; and I should have undertaken it, had there not been a more serious reason, which von Loeper also urges, against any attempt at systematic re-arrangement:  the further fact, namely, that many of the maxims have a mixed character, placing them above our distinctions of scientific and ethical, and making it difficult to decide under which heading they ought to fall.  I have, therefore, generally followed the traditional order; with this exception, that, for obvious reasons, the maxims dealing with Literature are here placed together; and as only a few of those on Art appear in these pages, I have included them in the same section.  In one or two cases I have united closely connected maxims which are separated in the original; and, for the sake of a short title, I have slightly narrowed the meaning of the word Spruch, which applies to any kind of shrewd saying, whether it be strictly a maxim or an aphorism.  Some little liberties of this kind may, I think, be taken by a translator anxious to put the work before his own public in an orderly and convenient form.

The last section in this book requires a word of explanation.  It is a little essay on Nature which is to be found with a variety of other fragments in the last volume of Goethe’s collected works.  Too short to stand by itself, if it appears at all, it must be in company with kindred matter; and as a series of aphorisms, presenting a poetic view of Nature unsurpassed in its union of beauty and insight, it is no inappropriate appendage to the maxims on Science.  It is little known, and it deserves to be widely known.  I venture to think that even in Germany the ordinary reader is unaware of its existence.  For us in England it was, so to speak, discovered by Professor Huxley, who many years ago gave a translation of it as a proem to a scientific periodical.  Perhaps that proem may yet be recovered as good salvage from the waters of oblivion, which sooner or later overwhelm all magazines.  Meanwhile I put forward this version.

For sixty years this essay has stood unquestioned in Goethe’s works; but doubt has recently been cast on its authorship.  The account hitherto given rests upon the excellent ground of Goethe’s own declaration.  The essay, it appears, was written about the year 1780, and offered to the Duchess Amalia.  Some time after her death it was found amongst her papers, and sent to Goethe in May, 1828, when, as he wrote to his friend the Chancellor von Mueller, he could not remember having composed it; although he recognised the writing as that of a person of whose services he used to avail himself some forty years previously.  That at so great a distance of time a prolific author could not recall the composition of so short a piece is not, indeed, improbable; but Goethe proceeded to say that it agreed very well with the pantheistic ideas which occupied him at the age of thirty, and that his insight then might be called a comparative, which was thus forced to express its strife towards an as yet unattained superlative.  Notwithstanding this declaration, the essay is now claimed as the production of a certain Swiss friend of Goethe’s, by name Tobler, on external evidence which need not be examined here, and on the internal evidence afforded by the style, which is certainly more pointed and antithetic than is usual with Goethe.  But a master of language who attempted every kind of composition may well have attempted this; and even those who credit an otherwise unknown person with the actual writing of the essay candidly admit that it is based upon conversations with Goethe.  It is so clearly inspired with his genius that he can hardly be forced to yield the credit of it to another.