nity and
promising a future achievement, we freely offer, in Winckelmann's own
refreshing manner, only that which is already prepared, even though it
be not complete, in order that it may after its own fashion exert a
timely influence in the great world of life and culture.

INTRODUCTION

The memory of noteworthy men and the presence of important works of art,
awaken from time to time a spirit of contemplation. Both stand before us
as legacies of each succeeding generation, the former by reason of their
deeds and fame, the latter actually preserved as indefinable realities.
Every judicious observer knows full well that only the contemplation of
these men and monuments in their entirety would be of real value, and
yet we are always attempting to make them more comprehensible by our
reflection and our words.

One is especially impelled to this when something new relating to such
subjects is discovered and made known. We trust therefore that the
public will find our renewed observations on Winckelmann, his character
and his achievements a timely contribution, since the letters which are
now published throw a more vivid light upon his mode of thought and the
conditions under which he labored.

ENTER WINCKELMANN

Even to ordinary mortals Nature has not denied a very precious
endowment--I refer to that lively impulse felt from earliest childhood,
to take hold of the external world, to learn to know it, to enter into
relation with it, and to form with it a complete whole. Certain chosen
spirits, on the other hand, often have the peculiarity of feeling a kind
of aversion to actual life, withdraw into themselves, and create in
themselves a world of their own, in this wise achieving the highest
inner development.

But when, in especially gifted men, appears the need common to all of us
of seeking in the external world a corresponding realization for all the
gifts with which Nature has endowed them, thereby raising their inner
being to a self-relying whole, we may be assured of the development of a
character in which both the present and the future world will rejoice.

Winckelmann was a man of this kind. Nature had placed in him whatever
makes and adorns the true man. Furthermore, he devoted his entire life
to the search for that which is harmonious and worthy in man and in art,
which is primarily concerned with man.

An obscure childhood, insufficient instruction in his youth, disjointed
and scattered studies in early m