It works, in the main, by a necessity similar to
that which makes a tree bear its fruit; and no external condition is
needed but the ground upon which it is to thrive.
On a closer examination, it seems as though, in the case of a genius,
the will to live, which is the spirit of the human species, were
conscious of having, by some rare chance, and for a brief period,
attained a greater clearness of vision, and were now trying to secure
it, or at least the outcome of it, for the whole species, to which the
individual genius in his inmost being belongs; so that the light which
he sheds about him may pierce the darkness and dullness of ordinary
human consciousness and there produce some good effect.
Arising in some such way, this instinct drives the genius to carry
his work to completion, without thinking of reward or applause or
sympathy; to leave all care for his own personal welfare; to make his
life one of industrious solitude, and to strain his faculties to
the utmost. He thus comes to think more about posterity than about
contemporaries; because, while the latter can only lead him astray,
posterity forms the majority of the species, and time will gradually
bring the discerning few who can appreciate him. Meanwhile it is with
him as with the artist described by Goethe; he has no princely patron
to prize his talents, no friend to rejoice with him:
_Ein Fuerst der die Talente schaetzt,
Ein Freund, der sich mit mir ergoetzt,
Die haben leider mir gefehlt_.
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