Even in its external features his life enjoyed no permanent improvement. Fate had indeed been somewhat hard upon a man of so much genuine culture and sensibility. Still the chronic poverty, which filled the largest cup of suffering in his life, was due not wholly to circumstances: it was partly his own nature or habits that kept him a pauper. This is all the more remarkable, that there is perhaps no work of moral or religious instruction which attaches more importance than the Talmud to industrial pursuits.[67] Saturated as his mind was with Talmudic lore, and disciplined as his early years had been by Talmudic training, Maimon could not be ignorant of the advantage which the spiritual life derives from financial independence on others; and it might therefore have been expected of him that, like many of the great rabbis, and Spinoza and Mendelssohn too, he would have devoted himself to some remunerative occupation, however humble. This would not have been impossible even in Poland, where the Jews were subject to no disability excluding them from the common industries of the country; and from the Autobiography it appears that, even at an early period of his life, he was more than half aware that his poverty was due, not wholly to the imperious demands of a higher culture, but to a somewhat selfish indolence.[68] In Germany, with its more advanced civilisation, it would have been much less difficult for him to make a tolerable living at some employment. The Autobiography shows that he was very generously received by a large circle of influential friends, who took a great deal of pains to secure for him a position of independence, and that they abandoned their effort only when they found it in vain. From the _Maimoniana_ also it appears that some of the most eminent men of his time continued to tender their friendly services. Among others, Plattner, Schultze (Aenesidemus), and even Goethe, made advances towards Maimon in a way that was not only very flattering, but might have been very helpful, if he had so chosen.[69] But he never got rid of the habit, which he had acquired in Poland, of depending on others; and the low standard of comfort, to which he had accustomed himself, left him without sufficient stimulus to seek an escape from his pauperised condition.