ell 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 no