A character like that of Maimon implied a general irregularity of life,--an absence of that regulation by fixed rules of conduct, which is essential to wellbeing. He was not indeed unaware of the importance of such regularity. "I require of every man of sound mind," he said one day, "that he should lay out for himself a plan of action." No wonder that this requirement leads his friend to remark, that it seemed to him as if Maimon's only plan of life had been to live without any plan at all.[78] The irregularity of his habits is strikingly seen in his want of method even at his literary work. Notwithstanding the technical culture he gave himself in early life in drawing, he seems never to have reached any degree of muscular expertness. Wolff remarked his awkwardness in handling his pen, and his inability to fold a letter with tolerable neatness.[79] In other respects also he was careless about those mechanical conveniences by which mental work is usually facilitated. He was commonly to be seen working at a very unsteady desk, one leg of which was supported by a folio volume.[80] He did not even confine himself to any particular place for work. Apparently he spent more of his day in public taverns than in his private lodging, and he might often be seen amid the distraction of such surroundings writing or revising proofs, while, as a consequence, his papers sometimes were mislaid and lost, and his work had all to be done over again. It was said of the Autobiography itself that it had been written on an alehouse bench.[81] He could never understand how any man could do intellectual work by rule; and therefore, though he had to make his living as best he could by literature, he never formed the habit of reserving one part of the day for work. He commonly worked in the morning, at least in _his_ morning, and that, his friend acknowledges, was not very early;[82] but this itself was evidently no fixed rule. Probably for the same reason he never adopted the plan, which authors find so serviceable, of first sketching an outline of a work before it is written out in detail. "I have," he said one day, "given up, with good result, the habit of making a draught beforehand. You are not, by a long way, so careful about your work when you know that you are going to write it over again; you neglect many a thought, do not write it down, because you believe that it will occur to you again in copying out, which frequently does not happen."[83] It is clear, however, that, his opinion to the contrary notwithstanding, his writings suffered from his unmethodical habits. "The fact," says the most competent of judges on this subject, "that Maimon is far from having attained the recognition which his importance deserves, may be accounted for by the defective condition of his writings. His extraordinary acuteness was designed, but was not sufficiently cultivated, to give to his investigations the light and the force of methodical exposition.