spontaneity. His letters demonstrate these traits very perceptibly,
and he knew absolutely no other method of working.

He gave himself up to mere reading late in the evening only, and
during his frequently sleepless nights. His days were occupied with
various labors or with specific preparatory studies in connection
with them, his intellect being thus kept at high tension by work and
research.

Mere studying undertaken with no immediate end in view save that of
acquiring knowledge, and which has such a fascination for those who
are familiar with it that they must be constantly on their guard lest
it cause them to neglect other more definite duties--such studying, I
say, he knew nothing about from experience, nor did he esteem it at
its proper value. Knowledge seemed to him too material, and the forces
of the intellect too noble, for him to see in this material anything
more than mere stuff to be worked up. It was only because he placed
more value upon the higher activity of the intellect, which creates
independently out of its own depths, that he had so little sympathy
with its efforts of a lower order. It is indeed remarkable from what a
small stock of material and how, in spite of wanting the means by
which such material is procured by others, Schiller obtained his
comprehensive theory of life (_Weltanschauung_), which, when once
grasped, fairly startles us by the intuitive truthfulness of genius;
for one can give no other name to that which originates without
outside aid.

Even in Germany he had traveled only in certain districts, while
Switzerland, of which his _William Tell_ contains such vivid
descriptions, he had never seen. Any one who has ever stood by the