e 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 Alt