It is not to my contemporaries, it is not to my compatriots – it is to humanity itself that I entrust my now-completed work, in the confidence that humanity will find some value in it, even if this value will only gain recognition belatedly, this being the inevitable fate of all good things. It can only be for humanity, not for the generation that hurries past, caught up in the delusions of the moment, that my mind has unceasingly devoted itself to its work, almost against my will, throughout the course of a long life. Even the lack of interest could not shake my faith in its value during this time; I constantly saw the false, the bad, and finally the absurd and nonsensical enjoying general admiration and esteem, and reflected that if people who know how to recognize what is genuine and true were not so rare as to be sought in vain for twenty years together, then those who are able to produce it would not be so few that their works afterwards constitute an exception to the transitory nature of earthly things, so that we would lose the comforting prospect of posterity, which constitutes a necessary source of strength for everyone with a lofty goal. – Nobody who seriously takes on and pursues a problem that does not result in material advantage can count on the sympathy of his contemporaries.