Preface to the second edition

Summary

When the first edition of this book left the presses and I picked up a copy of it I was much startled by the mutilations whose traces were everywhere. Here there was an adjective missing, there a clause, whole passages were left out with no consideration paid to transitions so that not only the meaning but also sometimes the underlying point of view had vanished. It was more the fear of Caesar than the fear of God which guided the hand in these mutilations, and while it nervously eradicated everything which was politically suspect, it preserved even the most disturbing passages which made reference to religion. In this way, the original patriotic-democratic orientation of the book was lost; from its pages stared at me uncannily a completely foreign spirit which reminded me of scholastic-theological polemics and was deeply repugnant to my humanistic-tolerant temperament.

At first, I entertained the hope that with a second printing I could again fill in all the lacunae of this book; but no such restoration of the kind is possible now since the original manuscript was lost in the house of my publisher during the great fire in Hamburg. My memory is too weak to be of much use, and, in addition, a thorough examination of the book is impossible because of the condition of my eyes. I will make do with taking a few of the larger omitted passages from the French version, which was published earlier than the German one, and intercalating them.