ho 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 unques