ble
tendencies, he lived as much alone as possible, and poorly. At the
close of his career, when he condescended to unburden his mind in
verse and friendly dialogue, it is clear that he had formed the habit
of recurring to religion for tranquillity, and of combating dominant
desire by dwelling on the thought of inevitable death. Platonic
speculations upon the eternal value of beauty displayed in mortal
creatures helped him always in his warfare with the flesh and roving
inclination. Self-control seems to have been the main object of his
conscious striving, not for its own sake, but as the condition
necessary to his highest spiritual activity. Self-coherence,
self-concentration, not for any mean or self-indulgent end, but for
the best attainment of his intellectual ideal, was what he sought for
by the seclusion and the renunciations of a lifetime.

The total result of this singular attitude toward human life, which
cannot be rightly described as either ascetic or mystical, but seems
rather to have been based upon some self-preservative instinct,
bidding him sacrifice lower and keener impulses to what he regarded as
the higher and finer purpose of his being, is a certain clash and
conflict of emotions, a certain sense of failure to attain the end
proposed, which excuses, though I do not think it justifies, the
psychologists, when they classify him among morbid subjects. Had he
yielded at any period of his career to the ordinary customs of his
easy-going age, he would have presented no problem to the scientific
mind. After consuming the fuel of the passions, he might have subsided
into common calm, or have blunted the edge of inspiration, or have
finished in some phase of madness or ascetical repentance. Such are
the common categories of extinct volcanic temperaments. But the
essential point about Michelangelo is that he never burned out, and
never lost his manly independence, in spite of numerous nervous
disadvantages. That makes him the unparalleled personality he is, as
now revealed to us by the impartial study of the documents at our
disposal.

IX

It is the plain duty of criticism in this age to search and probe the
characters of world-important individuals under as many aspects as
possible, neglecting no analytical methods, shrinking from no tests,
omitting no slight details or faint shadows that may help to round a
picture. Yet, after all our labour, we are bound to confess that the
man himself eludes our ins