ARKive Editions

ARKive Editions are exact photographic reproductions of books published in previous decades or centuries. In them, you find undiluted by modern notions or passing fads the words and ideas of good and thoughtful souls who preceded us in this life.

In this, there is great value: it helps free us from the myopia that afflicts souls drowning in the words and images flooding forth from our modern media, with its attention focused so intently on that which is new and popular today. Our age is less than perfect and ARKive Editions help us see that, enabling us to measure our own day by the often better standards of other times and places.

At the same time, previous ages and other cultures had their faults: and even in good books from earlier times we often find language, ideas, or values that were once deemed acceptable even by honorable souls, but are now seen clearly to be wrong.

We exclude from ARKive Editions books that have in them as significant themes ideas that are wrong. When, however, books that are overwhelmingly good are tainted by unfortunate peripheral remarks or occasional wrongheaded judgments, we have chosen to publish them intact. For we judge that the good to be done by such books far outweighs the harm done by occasional remarks which good men and women these days can (and should) dismiss as the unfortunate products of an age as flawed as our own, albeit in different ways.

If you disagree with our judgment, please understand, nonetheless, that we have sought to act in goodwill. Let your disagreement be an occasion for you to pray that our generation will soon come to see our own errors as clearly as we see the errors of earlier times; and then turn your attention back to the true riches that are to be found in each of our ARKive Editions, presented here exactly as they appeared to readers in earlier times.