Maxims and Reflections
extinction in 1828. Some of the observations on Science had meanwhile
been incorporated with two treatises on branches of that subject.
Eckermann tells a curious story of the way in which Goethe then
continued the publication of the maxims. _Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre_
had appeared in its first form in 1821. Afterwards, in 1829, Goethe
decided to remodel and lengthen it, and to make two volumes out of what
had originally been only one. His secretary was employed to copy it out
in its revised form. He wrote in a large hand, which gave the impression
that the story might well fill even three volumes; and directions to
this effect were sent to the publisher. But it was soon discovered that
the last two volumes would be very thin, and the publisher asked for
more manuscript. Goethe, in some perplexity, sent for Eckermann, and
producing two large bundles of unpublished papers, containing, as he
said, some very important things,--"opinions on life, literature,
science and art, all mingled together," proposed to him to lengthen out
the volumes by inserting selections from them. "You might," he
suggested, "fill the gaps in the _Wanderjahre_ by making up some six or
eight sheets from these detached pieces. Strictly speaking, they have
nothing to do with the story; but we may justify the proceeding by the
fact that I mention an archive in Makarie's house, in which such
miscellanies are preserved. In this way we shall not only get over our
difficulty, but find a good vehicle for giving much interesting matter
to the world." Eckermann approved the plan, and divided his selection
into two parts; and when the new edition of the _Wanderjahre_ appeared,
one of them was styled _Aus Makariens Archiv_, and the other
_Betrachtungen im Sinne der Wanderer: Kunst, Ethisches, Natur_. The
remainder of the unpublished maxims appeared posthumously, either in the
_Nachgelassene Werke_ in 1833, or in the quarto edition of 1836.
Instructions had been given to Eckermann to collect all the maxims,
arrange them under different heads, and include them in appropriate
volumes; but he resolved to deviate from his instructions to the extent
of publishing them all together; and the alteration is certainly an
advantage. A slight re-arrangement was made by von Loeper, who 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 unquestioned in Goethe's works; but
doubt has recently been cast on its authorship. The account hitherto
given rests upon the excellent ground of Goethe's own declaration. The
essay, it appears, was written about the year 1780, and offered to the
Duchess Amalia. Some time after her death it was found amongst her
papers, and sent to Goethe in May, 1828, when, as he wrote to his friend
the Chancellor von Müller, he could not remember having composed it;
although he recognised the writing as that of a person of whose services
he used to avail himself some forty years previously. That at so great a
distance of time a prolific author could not recall the composition of
so short a piece is not, indeed, improbable; but Goethe proceeded to say
that it agreed very well with the pantheistic ideas which occupied him
at the age of thirty, and that his insight then might be called a
comparative, which was thus forced to express its strife towards an as
yet unattained superlative. Notwithstanding this declaration, the essay
is now claimed as the production of a certain Swiss friend of Goethe's,
by name Tobler, on external evidence which need not be examined here,
and on the internal evidence afforded by the style, which is certainly
more pointed and antithetic than is usual with Goethe. But a master of
language who attempted every kind of composition may well have attempted
this; and even those who credit an otherwise unknown person with the
actual writing of the essay candidly admit that it is based upon
conversations with Goethe. It is so clearly inspired with his genius
that he can hardly be forced to yield the credit of it to another.
III
It is no wish or business of mine to introduce these maxims by adding
one more to the innumerable essays, some of them admirable, which have
been written on Goethe. I have found the translation of one of his works
a harder and certainly a more profitable task than a general discourse
on them all; and I profoundly believe that, rather than read what has
been written on Goethe, it is very much better to read Goethe himself.
It is in this belief that I hope the present translation may help in a
small way to increase the direct knowledge of him in this country. But
there are some remarks which I may be allowed to make on the nature and
use of maxims, and the peculiar value of those of Goethe; so far, at
least, as they deal with life and character and with literature. If
Professor Huxley could be induced to publish the comments which he made
to me as I read him the scientific maxims, besides being the best of
introductions to that section of the book, they would form a keen and
clear review of Goethe's scientific achievements, and an emphatic
testimony to his wonderful anticipations of later theories.
Between a maxim, an aphorism, and an apophthegm, and in a more obvious
degree, between these and an adage and a proverb, the etymologist and
the lexicographer may easily find a distinction. But they are, one and
all, fragments of the wisdom of life, treasured up in short, pithy
sentences that state or define some general truth of experience; and
perhaps with an adage and a maxim, enjoin its practice as a matter of
conduct. In the literature of every age there have been writers who,
instead of following a less severe method, thus briefly record the
lessons taught them by a wide view of the doings of men; from the dim,
far-off beginnings of Ptah Hotep the Egyptian to the authors of the
Proverbs of Solomon and the Book of Wisdom, from Theognis and Plutarch
downwards to our own time. They give us the shrewdest of their thoughts,
detached from the facts which gave them birth. But the professed writers
of maxims are not the only or always the best authors of them. There is
no great writer who is not rich in wise sentences; where we have the
advantage of seeing for ourselves the train of thought that induced and
the occasion that called them forth. Terse and pregnant sayings are
scattered innumerably through the pages of the finest poets, the great
orators, philosophers, and historians, wherever they touch the highest
level of truth and insight; be it in the lofty interpretation of life,
the defence of action or policy, the analysis of character and conduct,
or the record of progress; and then it is that large ideas and wide
observations take on imperceptibly the nature of maxim or aphorism,
illumining, like points of light, whole fields of thought and
experience. And the test of their value is that they lose little or
nothing by being deprived of their particular context and presented as
truths of general import. A collection of proverbs, shrewd sayings, and
pointed expressions, taken from the whole range of Greek and Latin
literature, was made by the industry of Erasmus in his great folio of
_Adagia_; and perhaps some future student, as diligent as he, may gather
up the aphoristic wisdom in the writings of modern times. Goethe himself
has in all his great works a wealth of aphorism unsurpassed by any other
writer whatever, even though it be Montaigne or Bacon or Shakespeare;
and sayings of his not to be found in this collection are some of the
best that he uttered.
The besetting sin of the maxim-writer is to exaggerate one side of a
matter by neglecting another; to secure point and emphasis of style, by
limiting the range of thought; and hence it is that most maxims present
but a portion of truth and cannot be received unqualified. They must
often be brought back to the test of life itself, and confronted and
compared with other sides of the experience they profess to embody. And
when a maxim stands this trial and proves its worth, it is not every one
to whom it is of value. To some it may be a positive evil. It makes the
strongest appeal to those who never see more than one aspect of
anything, hardening their hearts and blunting their minds; and even to
those who could make a good use of it, there are times when it may
mislead and be dangerous. Maxims in their application seem to need
something of the physician's art: they must be handled with care, and
applied with discretion. Like powerful drugs they may act with
beneficent effect on a hardy constitution; they may brace it to effort,
or calm the fever of a misguided activity; but great is the mischief
they work where the mind is weak or disorganised. As a medicine may save
a man at one time that would kill him at another, so the wise counsel of
to-day may easily become the poisonous suggestion of to-morrow.
With writers who depend for effect on mere qualities of style and ignore
the weightier matters of depth and truth of observation, Goethe has
nothing in common; nor with those who vainly imagine that insight is a
kind of art, with a method that may be learned and applied. By constant
practice a man of literary talent may, it is true, attain a fair mastery
of language terse and attractive, and then set himself, if he will, to
the deliberate creation of aphoristic wisdom or a philosophy of
proverbs; mistaking the dexterous handling of a commonplace for the true