Preface to the third edition

Summary

What is true and genuine would gain ground in the world more easily if those who are incapable of expressing it would not at the same time conspire to suppress it. This circumstance has already delayed and impeded many things that could have done the world some good, even where it has not stifled them completely. The consequence of this to me has been that although I was only thirty when the first edition of this work appeared, I am only seeing this third edition in my seventy-second year. I find consolation for this in Petrarch's words: ‘If someone who has been running all day arrives in the evening, it is enough’ (On True Wisdom, p. 140). I too have finally arrived and have the satisfaction of seeing the beginnings of my influence at the end of my career, with the hope that this influence, according to an old rule, will last all the longer, since it was so late starting out.–

The reader will not miss anything in this third edition that was contained in the second, but will receive considerably more, since with all the additions it runs 136 pages longer than the second edition, although it has the same type.

Seven years after the appearance of the second edition I published the two volumes of Parerga and Paralipomena.