In the description of my journey through Arabia Petraea I have endeavored
to bring fresh proof of the view, first introduced by Lepsius, that the
giant-mountain, now called Serbal, must be regarded as the mount on which
the law was given--and was indeed so regarded before the time of
Justinian--and not the Sinai of the monks.

As regards the stone house of the Senator Petrus, with its windows
opening on the street--contrary to eastern custom--I may remark, in
anticipation of well founded doubts, that to this day wonderfully well-
preserved fire-proof walls stand in the oasis of Pharan, the remains of
a pretty large number of similar buildings.

But these and such external details hold a quite secondary place in this
study of a soul. While in my earlier romances the scholar was compelled
to make concessions to the poet and the poet to the scholar, in this one
I have not attempted to instruct, nor sought to clothe the outcome of my
studies in forms of flesh and blood; I have aimed at absolutely nothing
but to give artistic expression to the vivid realization of an idea that
had deeply stirred my soul. The simple figures whose inmost being I have
endeavored to reveal to the reader fill the canvas of a picture where, in
the dark background, rolls the flowing ocean of the world's history.

The Latin title was suggested to me by an often used motto which exactly
agrees with the fundamental view to which I have been led by my
meditations on the mind and being of man; even of those men who deem that
they have climbed the very highest steps of that stair which leads into
the Heavens.

In the Heautontimorumenos of Terence, Chremes answers his neighbor
Menedemus (Act I, SC. I, v. 25) "Homo sum; humani nil a me alienum puto,"