Egypt's Renaissance

In this brief letter, we have come to write for the truth and for history. Our intention in what we will gather in this book is not to mix truth with falsehood, nor to resort to fantasy to defeat it, nor to let history walk to the borders of falsehood, nor to be led by superstition. Our history will not be like what Lamartine wrote, so that we will be storytellers in history and historians in stories. We will not make the character we intend to write about a deity, so that people will be worshippers, or a statue that we erect on the shoulders of the people and the necks of the masses. We do not want to walk in it as the philosopher Carlyle walked in his "Heroes," for with what he wrote he established a new worship, which is the worship of people by people. For the likes of those who have undertaken to write about geniuses must be brought down from their statues, since they have taken history out of its origins, poetry out of its aspects, and imagination out of its limits.