It is hard to say, but this frustrated longing for isolation, which has to be accepted as unfeasible and fought over in an apparently hostile daily life, seems more beneficial to the artist than actual, full and consummate isolation. In the first case, we have a spirit energized by circumstance; in the second, an incentive to inertia. In the first case, an effort that renews and justifies the longing, which makes the artist value isolation much more when it is partially achieved—because this is the truth: his longing, at worst, can always be partially achieved, and to better advantage than one might suppose.