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MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY

  [Illustration: _F. Max Mueller Aged 4._]




MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY

A FRAGMENT


BY THE


RT. HON. PROFESSOR F. MAX MUeLLER, K.M.


_WITH PORTRAITS_


New York
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1901


COPYRIGHT, 1901, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS


TROW DIRECTORY
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
NEW YORK




PREFACE


For some years past my father had, in the intervals of more serious
work, occupied his leisure moments in jotting down reminiscences of
his early life. In 1898 and 1899 he issued the two volumes of _Auld
Lang Syne_, which contained recollections of his friends, but very
little about his own life and career. In the Introductory Chapter to
the Autobiography he explains fully the reasons which led him, at his
advanced age, to undertake the task of writing his own Life, and he
began, but alas! too late, to gather together the fragments that he
had written at different times. But even during the last two years of
his life, and after the first attack of the illness which finally
proved fatal, he would not devote himself entirely to what he
considered mere recreation, as can be seen from such a work as his
_Six Systems of Indian Philosophy_ published in May, 1889, and from
the numerous articles which continued to appear up to the very time of
his death.

During the last weeks of his life, when we all knew that the end could
not be far off, the Autobiography was constantly in his thoughts, and
his great desire was to leave as much as possible ready for
publication. Even when he was lying in bed far too weak to sit up in a
chair, he continued to work at the manuscript with me. I would read
portions aloud to him, and he would suggest alterations and dictate
additions. I see that we were actually at work on this up to the 19th
of October, and on the 28th he was taken to his well-earned rest. One
of the last letters that I read to him was a letter from Messrs.
Longmans, his lifelong publishers, urging the publication of the
fragments of the Autobiography that he had then written.

My father's object in writing his Autobiography was twofold: firstly,
to show what he considered to have been his mission in life, to lay
bare the thread that connected all his labours; and secondly, to
encourage young struggling scholars by letting them see how it had
been possible for one of themselves, without fortune, a stranger in a
strange land, to arrive at the position to which he attained, without
ever sacrificing his independence, or abandoning the unprofitable and
not very popular subjects to which he had determined to devote his
life.

Unfortunately the last chapter takes us but little beyond the
threshold of his career. There is enough, however, to enable us to see
how from his earliest student days his leanings were philosophical and
religious rather than classical; how the study of Herbart's philosophy
encouraged him in the work in which he was engaged as a mere student,
the Science of Language and Etymology; how his desire to know
something special, that no other philosopher would know, led him to
explore the virgin fields of Oriental literature and religions. With
this motive he began the study of Arabic, Persian, and finally
Sanskrit, devoting himself more especially to the latter under
Brockhaus and Rueckert, and subsequently under Burnouf, who persuaded
him to undertake the colossal work of editing the Rig-veda.

The Autobiography breaks off before the end of the period during which
he devoted himself exclusively to Sanskrit. It is idle to speculate
what course his life's work might have taken, had he been elected to
the Boden Professorship of Sanskrit; but he lived long enough to
realize that his rejection for that chair in 1860, which was so hard
to bear at the time, was really a blessing in disguise, as it enabled
him to turn his attention to more general subjects, and devote himself
to those philological, philosophical, religious and mythological
studies, which found their expression in a series of works commencing
with his _Lectures on the Science of Language_, 1861,