When Bagehot issued his work on the English Constitution, it was hailed by the critics as the most wonderful and philosophical dissertation on the subject in any language or from any pen. John Stuart Mill used to say that of all great subjects much remained to be written, and that especially was this true of the English Constitution. Bagehot's work, although affording the conclusion that monarchy in England exists as a logical necessity, is so unbiased in its premises, so logical and clear in its deductions, that this manifest fairness, although leading one to conclusions distasteful to a republican mind, must endear him to his readers. Dealing with a subject somewhat dry in its details, he invests inanimate objects with so much light that they become realities. In the highest sense he combines popularity and scholarship.
Spinoza's philosophy may be traced both to the influence of Bacon, his predecessor, and to Descartes, his contemporary. Its combination of positivism with the enthusiasm of piety characterizes his philosophy as unique in itself, for while treating man from a purely mechanical standpoint, it asserts that the mechanism itself is entirely divine. Spinoza was a voluntary martyr in the cause of Free Thought. He was at the same time both Pantheist and Monist, yet sincere in his devotion to nature and the God of nature. His religion naturally made him a Monist, while his philosophy led him to express the Pantheism that the lover of God in Nature cannot avoid. While he renounced his Judaism and entered the ranks of the Christian philosophers, he never received baptism. He may be ranked among the greatest of the German mystics, whose work had such profound influence upon the dogmatic Christianity of a later day. The epithet conferred on him, namely, "God-intoxicated," summarizes his whole attitude and the character of his philosophy better than any lengthy dissertation.
When Schopenhauer began to write, he declared himself a true disciple of Kant, but he modifies and adapts Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" to such an extent that he reaches the attitude of opposition. This attitude he manifests throughout all his writings. He is truly an Apostle of Protest, but in spite of his positivist contradictions and his materialistic pantheism, he opens up a mine of suggestions to the literary and philosophical student. In spite of the apparent tragedy due to the conflict within him, we cannot help gathering from Schopenhauer an immensity of what is true, what is good and what is excellent. One thing especially noticeable about his writings is that while German philosophers are often ponderous and in fact nebulous, Schopenhauer is always clear, original, and readable.
To Machiavelli belongs by acclaim the honor of having written the ideal biography of a State. His clear, straightforward, concise statement of conditions and characters as he saw then is a model for all writers of record. He was the first great Italian historian, and no man has ever been more ardent in his patriotism or a more earnest supporter of government for and by the people. The greatest tribute to his inflexible honesty of character is the fact that while no man had greater opportunities to enrich himself at the cost of the State, he died leaving his family in the greatest poverty. His varied political experience, and his assiduous study of classic writers, gave him the ability as well as the desire to write the history of his native State. Time has pronounced this History to be a classic worthy of preservation, and the perspective of time has also enabled us to form a juster and greater estimate of its author.
The Ideal Republics and Empires that have been constructed from time to time by political dreamers have all the attractiveness of works like Pilgrim's Progress or Gulliver's Travels, combined with a philosophy and political insight that give them a double claim to be considered Classics. Modern progress may be more deeply indebted than we can estimate to the fantasies and airy castles of men like Rousseau, More, and Campanella. The four Ideal Republics or Governments described in this volume are perhaps the most famous of all, since they rank not only as great creations of the imagination but as literature of the highest class; and their writers have a further claim upon posterity from the fact that they helped to make history.
The Third and concluding Section of the Library deals with that tremendous range of world-wide literature which we call, for want of a better name, Belles Lettres. Goethe contributes his brilliant and sagacious observations on men and things as he communicated them to Eckerman. Landor, of whom Swinburne has said that Milton alone stands higher, both in prose and verse, furnishes us with his Classical Conversations. Montesquieu and Goldsmith are drawn on for their Persian and Chinese Letters. Lord Chesterfield gives us the irony and hard-headed criticism combined with worldly common sense contained in the Letters to His Son, and the various names best known in French and English Belles Lettres yield what is greatest in them. Ottoman Literature, comprising Arabian, Persian, and Hebraic Poems, affords the reader an insight into the romantic and dramatic character of the Oriental. The Dabistan, possibly the most extraordinary book ever written in the East, finds itself at home in this section, while the Literature of the Hebrews is ideally represented in that most wonderful of all monuments of human wisdom, and perhaps folly, the "Talmud," together with the basis of modern metaphysics, the "Kabbala."
The Sufistic Quatrains of Omar Khayyam are here for the first time presented complete in a collection of this order. The various editions of Fitzgerald are reprinted, collated, and to them is added the valuable Heron-Allen analysis of Fitzgerald's sources of inspiration. The very rare Whinfield version is found here complete; and for the first time in English appears M. Nicolas' French transcription of the Teheran Manuscript. It is safe to say that any lover of Omar wishing to add to his collection the versions here quoted would be compelled to disburse more than one hundred times the amount this book will cost him.
While the Library of Universal Classics does not claim to be the final condensation of the treasure houses of human philosophy and lore, whether practical or ideal, it does most emphatically assert its right to be called the most useful, most attractive, and most representative selection, within the limits assigned to it, of those world-masterpieces of literature which men, for lack of a more luminous name, call Classics.
