He quotes with
approval those admirable words from Goethe, "In der Beschrankung
zeigt sich erst der Meister"; yet still always finds himself wavering
between "frittering myself away on the infinitely little, and longing
after what is unknown and distant." There is, doubtless, over and
above the physical consumptive tendency, an instinctive turn of
sentiment in this touching confession. Still, what strengthened both
tendencies was that metaphysical prejudice for the "Absolute," the
false intellectual conscience. "I have always avoided what attracted
me, and turned my back upon the point where secretly I desired to
be"; and, of course, that is not the way to a free and generous
productivity, in literature, or in anything else; though in
literature, with Amiel at all events, it meant the fastidiousness
which [33] is incompatible with any but the very best sort of
production.
And as that abstract condition of Maia, to the kind and quantity of
concrete literary production we hold to have been originally possible
for him; so was the religion he actually attained, to what might have
been the development of his profoundly religious spirit, had he been
able to see that the old-fashioned Christianity is itself but the
proper historic development of the true "essence" of the New
Testament.
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