w 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 seeme