Pater's Religion of Sanity

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    Pater's Religion of Sanity: "Plato and Platonism" as a Document of Victorian UnbeliefAuthor(s): U. C. KnoepflmacherSource: Victorian Studies, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Dec., 1962), pp. 151-168Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3825692Accessed: 13/06/2010 14:37

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    PATER'S RELIGION OF SANITY: "PLATO AND PLATONISM"AS A DOCUMENT OF VICTORIAN UNBELIEF

    In later years he came upon philosophieswhich occupied him much in the estimateof the proportionof the sensuous and the ideal elements in human knowledge, therelative parts they bear in it; and, in his intellectual scheme, was led to assign verylittle to the abstractthought,and much to the sensiblevehicle or occasion ... and herememberedgratefullyhow the Christianreligion, hardlyless than the religion of theancient Greeks, translatingso much of its spiritual verity into things that may beseen, condescends n partto sanction this infirmity, f so it be, of our humanexistence,wherein the world of sense is so much with us, and welcomed this thoughtas a kindof keeperand sentinel over his soul therein.

    WALTER PATER, "The Child in the House" (1878)1

    l UBLISHED in the year prior to his death, Plato and Platonism', 1 (1893), is unquestionably the most public piece of criticism byv' WalterPater,an ambitioussynthesisof all the assumptionshatunderliehis scatteredessaysand worksof fiction.Originallydeliveredasa series of lectures at Oxford,carefullyplannedand modulated,Platoand Platonismavowedlycontainsa recreationand re-assessment f the"environment" hich producedthe dialoguesof Plato (P&P, p. 10).2

    1 Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays, Library Edition (London, 1910), pp. 186-187. Subsequent references are to this edition of Pater's works.2 Just as Pater's Proustian essay, "The Child in the House," tries to recover a childhoodatmosphere from the vantage point of the matured adulthood which is a direct out-growth of this atmosphere, so do Plato and Platonism and Marius try to isolate theoriginal "environment" of a tradition from the vantage point of its later developments."Environment" (which for Pater is almost synonymous with "atmosphere," another of

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    Judged by the strictures of modern historical scholarship, Pater's re-production of this Hellenic "environment"seems highly fanciful. It con-sists of an arbitraryfusion of the doctrines of Plato and of certain of hispredecessors (as "interpreted"by Pater) with the "visible" religion ofthe ancient Spartans. Judged by Pater's own standards, however, hisloose application of Hegel's "historicmethod" is necessitated and sanc-tioned by his own painful awareness of the "ever-changing 'Time-Spirit'or Zeit-geist," the perennial fluxwhich renders all things relative (p. 9) .3Pater's fabrication of a new Platonism wholly "independent of, yet truein spirit to, the Platonism of the Platonic dialogues" (p. 269), is thusconditioned by the demands of his own age, an age he describes as oneof "decadence,""rich and various in special apprehensions of truth"but"tentative and dubious in its sense of their ensemble" (pp. 282, 174).Plato and Platonism, then, like Marius the Epicurean, is to pro-vide a new "ensemble." As in the novel, Pater'spatient reshufflingof thePagan philosophies of the past is conducted, with an eye fixed on thepresent, through a system of oblique allusions and cross-references.Plato and Platonism is the last expression of Walter Pater's life-longsearch for a religious kernel to be found within the development ofGreek thought, Greek art, and Greek mythology: a quasi-Christian"essence"contained within the Hellenic ideal. It is the final, most elab-

    his most recurrent terms) thus becomes an indispensable source for the physical andintellectual "influences" which it yields. "Environment" or "atmosphere" determinesthe man, who like Marius the Epicurean or the personae of Pater's Imaginary Portraits,is merely the product of its "influences": "In the intellectual as in the organic world thegiven product, its normal or abnormalcharacteristics, are determined, as people say, bythe 'environment' " (P&P, p. 10). In Marius, for instance, the physical "atmospheres"of "White-Nights," the young Roman's ancestral villa, or of the "church in the houseof Cecilia," provide sensory influences which are as important as the intellectual influ-ences which affect "the house of [Marius'] thoughts" (Marius, II, 63). As Miss JeanSudrannhas convincingly demonstrated, in "VictorianCompromiseand Modern Revolu-tion," ELH, XXVI (1959), 425-444, the search for an "environment,"a "house," or a"city," is one of the prime metaphorswhich pattern Pater's novel.

    3 Pater's acute awareness of historical development, of an inflexible, quasi-Marxian"prin-ciple of flamboyancy or fluidity in all things" (P&P, p. 235), underlies all of his work.It is, as Philip Appleman has pointed out, in "Darwin, Pater, and a Crisis in Criticism,"1859: Entering an Age of Crisis (Bloomington, 1959), pp. 81-95, the stimulus for acritical relativism or impressionismto which it is essentially opposed. To Pater, the fluxobstructs the aims of the idealist eager for stasis and permanence, but aids the criticalrelativist who regards the evolution of myths, ideas, or events of the past "with a viewrather to a total impression than to the debate of particular points" (Greek Studies, p.82). By recovering the impressions of past "environments,"the relativist can test theirpresent validity and applicability in an imaginative "interpretation." As Ernest LeeTuveson shows, in The Imagination as a Means of Grace (Berkeley, 1960), p. 87,Pater's impressionism is a lineal "descendant of Lockian philosophy." But it is aboveall an impressionism sharpened by Pater's acceptance and revulsion over the mechanicsof the Zeitgeist. See also Milton Millhauser, "Walter Pater and the Flux," Journal ofAesthetics and Art Criticism, XI (1952), 214-223, and the present writer's "Historicismas Fiction: Motion and Rest in the Stories of Walter Pater," scheduled to appear inModern Fiction Studies.

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    orate, but still characteristically hesitant and irresolute, iteration of aquestion treated imperfectly twenty years earlier in Studies in the His-tory of the Renaissance (1873), "thisvery question of the reconciliationof the religion of antiquity with the religion of Christ" (p. 33).

    IIn "Winckelmann,"the essay which had formed the core of The

    Renaissance, Pater had written an eloquent defense of the immutabilityand universality of those feelings produced by the visual impressions ofart and ritual. Abruptly, and without much logic, Pater had then identi-fied these feelings with a permanent aesthetic religion available to all.Ritual, the "religious observance,"he argued, was a "fixed element" andconsequently of enduring value in its adaptability to the motions of theZeitgeist; ritual's abstract content, on the other hand, "myth"or dogma,was variable, ethereal, and therefore negligible (Renaissance, p. 203).Borrowing a simile made famous by Marx and Kingsley, Pater con-tinued: "SuchPagan worship, in spite of local variations, essentially one,is an element in all religions. It is the anodyne which the religiousprinciple, like one administering opiates to the incurable, has added tothe law which makes life sombre for the vast majority of mankind"(Renaissance, p. 202, my italics).Pater was to change the tone of this passage. Increasingly awareof the necessity for moral "law," he sought, in the years after TheRenaissance, to speak to those concerned with the visible world of per-ception who, like the artist and the natural scientist, were (as he be-lieved) inclined to accept only the laws of their senses. He regarded thepainstaking composition of Marius as nothing less than "asort of duty."4Pater excised the offending "Conclusion"from the second edition of TheRenaissance (1877), and did not dare to reintroduce it until 1888, threeyears after the publication of Marius. He now agreed "to reprint it here,with some slight changes which bring it closer to my original meaning,"but pointedly referred those "young men" who might have been misledby the "Conclusion"to the fuller treatment of "thethoughts suggested byit"in his novel (Renaissance, p. 233). There is little doubt that the entirecontroversy over The Renaissance forced Pater into a more scrupulousappraisal of what "his original meaning" had actually been. Was theaesthetic life, the cult of sensation "simply for those moments' sake"4 From a letter to Violet Paget written in July 1883, quoted in A. C. Benson, Walter Pater(London, 1906), p. 90.

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    (Renaissance, p. 238), a truly valid pursuit? Was Hellenism nothingmore than "finding the end of all endeavour in the aspects of humanform" (Renaissance, p. 182)? Pater's re-appraisal led him to a partialrejection of his earlier, somewhat facile enthusiasm for an "universalpagan sentiment" (Renaissance, p. 201). It led him to test out his as-sumptions in thinly veiled "imaginary portraits" of young sensation-seekers. And it led him, at last, to the lectures of Plato and Platonism.Marius the Epicurean, His Sensations and Ideas, sets the stagefor Plato and Platonism. The most complex of Pater's "imaginary por-traits," it is, despite its masterly evocations of past "atmospheres,"ahighly inconclusive work. The "constitutionally impressible" Marius issubjected to a series of "sensations and ideas," which convey, on thewhole, the same philosophical systems that Pater was to re-examinein Plato and Platonism (Marius, II, 132) .5Marius is ultimately broughtin contact with the "environment"provided by a curiously HellenisticChristian community whose apostolic religion is soon to be voided by thecapricious Zeitgeist.6 Although it is clear that Pater considers the doc-trinal content of this religion as merely one of the "manyvoices it wouldbe a moral weakness not to listen to," it is the "humanistic" mpact of itsrituals and of the symbol of the Eucharist which vaguely impresses onMarius the feeling of joyful renunciation that stimulates his almost acci-dental act of sacrifice (I, 44; II, 123).Marius offers no reconciliation. The book's intricate system ofanalogy and juxtaposition is designed to obviate the exclusiveness of anyone "way"to truth. The novel's final effect is not derived from its struc-tured ascent to the Hellenized Christianity which appeals to both the

    5 The discrepant religious and philosonhical systems examined by Marius originate, sig-nificantly enough, in the Platonic "environment" recreated in Plato and Platonism.Not only are the Epicurean and Stoic doctrines directly related by Pater to those ex-pounded by Plato's predecessors, Heraclitus and Parmenides (cf. fns. 13, 17, and 18, be-low), but even the "impressions" that Marius derives from his encounters with theteachers of the brotherhood of the Asclepiadae, of his Pisan instructor, of Lucian, andof Apuleius are represented as being Platonic. Marius himself links the brotherhood'sideal of purity to the "old Greek temperance" of Plato's Charmides and recognizes inits inculcated "love of visible beauty" the "point of view" of the Phaedrus (Marius, I,34, 32); the lyceum of his tutor is described as "one of the many imitations of Plato'sAcademy" (I, 46); the two writers to whose work he is introduced by Flavian - "oneLucian" and Apuleius, the author of "the book of books" (I, 51, 55) - are met in per-son by Marius much later in the novel. The one proves to be a Socratic relativist whoconforms to the "independent" Platonic tradition that Pater establishes in Plato andPlatonism; the other is a Platonist to whom "the Ideas of Plato were no creatures oflogical abstraction" (II, 87; for my comments on Apuleius' presumed "Platonism" seeVS, IV [1961], 411-412).6 Pater blames the loss of "the gracious spirit of the primitive church" on the persecutionsit suffered by the Romans: driven into "exclusiveness," "puritanism,"and an "asceticgloom," Christianity will not recover its earlier "humanism" until the sixteenth-centuryRenaissance (Marius, II, 118, 125).

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    "sensations" nd the "ideas"of Marius,but ratherfrom the bluntingoppositionsand realignmentswhich make Christianitya strong possi-bility, but a possibilityonly. But if Christianitycannotyield the one"way"o truth, t can at leastendowMariuswiththe "spirit"with whichhe approaches he death he has feared for so long. This spiritis non-doctrinal. For Marius is impressedonly by the "visible": he serenebeautyof the silentyoungChristianCornelius,he facesof theboyswhosing a mysteriousJewishpsalmody,the symbolof the Eucharist.Thevalueof this "visible"Christianityies in its continuity, he permanenceof its symbols.For continuity, he adaptation o changeand death,theflux itself, constitutethe novel's main theme.7Mariusillustratespri-marilythe similaritiesbetween presumablyantagonisticways of life:between the materialismof Epicurusand the idealism of Aurelius,be-tween the satiricalApuleiusof Flavian's"Euphuism"nd the idealisticApuleiusconcoctedby Marius,between the anthropomorphiceligionof Numaandthe ritualisticreligionof Christ,all illustrations f the dic-tum that"oppositessues"are"deducible romthe same text"(I, 201).The central llustrationof this text is the Christiandeath of a Pagan.The predicamentof Pater s identical to thatof Mariusorto thatof FlorianDeleal, the characterdescribed n "The Child in the House"(1878), in the passagequotedas an epigraphabove.Pater'sconvictionthat any belief must be founded on the exclusive authority of the sensesjarredwith his deep religious sentiment, inimical to the inconclusivenessof the aesthetic life. The separation between "the sensuous and theideal," in a world of permanent flux, informs all of Pater's work: Sebas-tian van Storck, Gaston de Latour, or Pater's version of Coleridge, aredefeated by this irreconcilability. Although figures like Raphael, SirThomas Browne, Wordsworth, or Brother "Apollyon"may span the gapbetween the empirical truth of the senses and the ideal truths of religionand philosophy, their example cannot be followed: Browne and Raphaelare aided by their belief in archaic religions invalidated by the Zeitgeist;Wordsworth, by a placid Pantheism that Pater refuses to accept. Brother"Apollyon" s himself a symbol of this unattainable fusion; he is a Greekgod in disguise, a mythic embodiment of cyclical continuity.Plato and Platonism is the culmination of Pater's search for an

    7 For an entirely different reading of the novel's meaning, see Bernard Duffey, "TheReligion of Pater's Marius," Texas Studies of Literature and Language, II (1960),103-114. Although I agree unreservedly with Mr. Duffey's interpretation of the novelas a redefinition of the position taken in The Renaissance, I cannot accept his concomi-tant belief that Marius somehow reflects a "central theology" analogous to that foundin the works of F. D. Maurice (p. 106).

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    aesthetic religion of form, a search begun only semi-consciously in TheRenaissance. With the exception of Marius, a work to which it is closelylinked, it is Pater's most "prophetic"piece of writing. Yet, as such, it alsoillustrates the peculiar characteristics which separate Pater from otherVictorian critics of religion and culture. Unlike these, Pater is not a"reconciler."He cannot merge the empirical and the ideal into an ac-ceptable "spiritual verity" such as Matthew Arnold's "power not our-selves" or Samuel Butler's self-created "Evolutionary Personality." ForPater, the antagonism between sense and idea can be resolved onlythrough a continuous act of qualification and elimination. Thus, re-ligion and philosophy are pared down, not only to a Victorian "essence"of their content, but to their "sensible vehicles," ritual and dialectic, andto the vague emotions that these provoke. The sweeping historical manip-ulations of Plato and Platonism, like the juxtapositions and alternationsin Marius are designed to arouse the reader into a moder "religion ofsanity" (P&P, p. 227), which, unlike the lost Graeco-Christian"religionof cheerfulness"depicted in the novel (II, 114), is a curiously shrivelledcult of moral form, a pseudo-Christianity, which conserves the beliefin "things that may be seen, hardly less than the religion of the ancientGreeks."

    IIFundamental belief gone, in almost all of us, at least some relics of it remain -queries, echoes, reactions, after-thoughts; and they help to make an atmosphere,a mental atmosphere, hazy perhaps, yet with many secrets of soothing light andshade, associating more definite objects to each other by a perspective pleasant tothe inward eye against a hopefully receding background of remoter and everremoter possibilities.8

    Plato and Platonism is Pater's attempt to construct a "mental at-mosphere" out of his "independent" Platonism and of the shatteredrelics of its modern, Christian correlatives. The lectures are primarilyaddressed to the scientifically-minded doubter of a materialistic genera-tion, "the speculative young man of our own day" who finds solace inthe sheer observation of "organism and environment, or protoplasmperhaps, or evolution, or the Zeit-geist and its doings,"and who is unableto enlist these pursuits in a more comprehensive search (p. 154). Pater's"soothing"atmosphere is also directed at the opposing camp of those

    8 "Prosper Merim6e," Miscellaneous Studies, p. 15.

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    who, like Wilde, Moore, or Dowson, regard the visible world as a meresource for pleasurable stimuli, in dangerous emulation of those decadentAthenians who affected what was "least fortunate in the habits, thepleasures, the sordid business of the class below them" (p. 274). Scien-tist and aesthete, both students of the palpable, both aware of the flux,are thus regarded as prospective converts to Pater's Hellenistic Chris-tianity, the "religion of sanity" to be reconstructed out of the visibleremnants of the "tradition, the development," of Plato's thought andmethod.

    Although relying far more on the subtleties of inference and sug-gestion than on open polemics, Plato and Platonism follows the cast ofthe theological essays of Matthew Arnold, Pater's fellow-humanist andfellow-believer in the convolutions of the Zeitgeist. In St. Paul and Prot-estantism (1870), Arnold is concerned with the establishment of atradition outside the realm of doctrinal religion; in Plato and Platonism,as we have seen, Pater attempts to set up a Platonism "independent of,yet true in spirit to, the Platonism of the Platonic dialogues." Yet thedifferences between the two men are noteworthy. While Arnold up-holds the literary permanence of the Biblical revelation over the fluidityof the Greek vision, it is precisely this fluidity "with no link on historictime" which attracts Pater to Hellenism (Greek Studies, p. 101). ToArnold, the Hellenic "bannerof art and science" must yield its place tothe Hebraic "banner of righteousness."9To Pater, the Greek love of formmerely survives in the humanism of Christianity. In Plato and Plato-nism (as in Greek Studies or in The Renaissance) the Hellenic idealadapts itself, because of its concreteness, to the laws of change andmutability. Nonetheless, Pater's insistence on an all-Hellenic heritageand his seeming disregard of the Judaeo-Christian tradition are some-what misleading. Believing with most Victorian prophets that "a kind ofreligious influence" can be drawn, not only from "theological literature"itself, but from "profane"writers and artists, as well, Pater prefers toexert his own "influence" in what is ostensibly a discussion of Greekphilosophy and form.10Read correctly then, Plato and Platonism may be regarded as anaesthetician's latter-day equivalent of St. Paul and Protestantism, Litera-ture and Dogma (1873), and God and the Bible (1875). Searching like

    9 Cf. Literature and Dogma (London, 1873), p. 354: "But conduct, plain matter as itis, is six-eighths of life, while art and science are only two-eighths."10"At their best, these writers become, as we say sometimes, 'prophets,' such a charac-ter depending on the effect not merely of their matter, but of their matter as allied toan 'electric affinity'with peculiar form" (Appreciations, p. 26).

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    Arnold for the "essence" of a contemporary faith and using Arnold'scharacteristic tools of analogy, antithesis, and speculative re-arrange-ment, Pater produces a work which is likewise anti-philosophical, anti-abstractionist, and anti-dogmatic in its bias. But whereas Arnold andmost other Victorian reconcilers search for some time-honored and in-variable pool of human experience, Pater, forced to rely on an exclusivetruth of the senses, "delights in tracing traditions"only to efface them(Appreciations, p. 244).11 The "atmosphere"which he holds out to hisprospective Platonist is therefore far more tentative and disguised thanArnold's forthright presentation of his "essence"of Christianity.12WhileArnold boldly tries to recover the "secret of Jesus"through a reinterpre-tation of the Gospels and the Pauline epistles, Pater cautiously evadesany open friction with traditional theology and adheres to a purelysecular line of inquiry. Still, his frame of reference is unmistakablyChristian. To Pater, the "environment"of the Platonic dialogues is thefountainhead of all subsequent systems of metaphysics and ethics;Christianity and its modern "relics"are therefore the outgrowth (or, atleast, the analogous by-product) of the "independent" Platonism thathe intends to retrace. Thus aided by his spatial theory, Pater not onlyavoids Arnold's frequently awkward attempts at biblical exegesis, buthe also manages to side-step any polemical engagements with theestablished Church.

    Pater's historical theories impress on Plato and Platonism a scopefar broader than that of Arnold's religious works or of Newman's Essayon Development. In Pater's system, the Pagan gn6sis merely becomesChristian "vision." Pater offers no "secret of Jesus," no "religion new-

    11 As a fin-de-siecle spokesman of the "relative," Pater is far less positive than themajority of Victorian reconcilers. Arnold enlists the Zeitgeist in order to build a Churchof England conformable to his cultured skepticism; Newman eventually relies on de-velopmental theories to stress the finite authorityof the Roman Catholic Church; GeorgeEliot employs the causal network of her novels to verify and confirm the existence ofa separable ethical truth; Butler, Pater's contemporary, endows the evolutionary worldof Darwin with a teleology of his own. Pater can follow none of these procedures. Tohim, evolutionism merely accentuates his disbelief in anything other than the phe-nomenal impression. Unlike George Eliot or Butler, he cannot bring himself to impressa deliberate purpose on a world he regards as dominated by perpetual flux- thevacuum of his relativism remains unfulfilled. He can accept even less the Invisible, likeNewman, or a "reasonable" substitute, like Arnold. And, yet, like all of these"prophets,"he attempts the standard fusion of feeling and thought.12 Pater had a marked dislike for open polemics, very likely as a result of the controversyover The Renaissance. In his essay on "Sir Thomas Browne," for instance, he praisesBrowne's suspicion of theological disputations, while in "Pascal" he deems it necessaryto point out that his subject's participation in the Jansenist controversies transcendedthe bounds of partisanship, belonging instead to "disputes not of a single age but ofeternal ones" (Appreciations, pp. 131-132, 61). The same distrust of partisan "solu-tions" in the realm of religion colors Pater's review of Mrs. Humphry Ward's RobertElsmere, discussed in the final pages of this study.

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    given;"Hebraism,Aberglaube terms ntegralto the Arnoldian ype ofinquiry are carefullyshunned.'3Hellenismis a self-sufficient radi-tion,containing n itself bothdesirableandundesirable xtremes.Thus,Plato'sabstractedand thereforeundesirable"Theoryof Ideas" s meta-morphosedby Pater ntothe "rude cholasticism f the pedanticMiddleAges"or into the "cold-blooded ranscendentalism"f philosophersikeMarcusAurelius,Spinoza,or Kant,whose searchfor an "idealcity" s,like the searchfor the one "way"n Marius,destinedto cometo nought(P&P, pp. 30, 164). Likewise, the "old Heracliteanism" of Plato'spredecessors ecomes henew Darwinianhypothesis,"theentiremoderntheoryof 'development',"ncouraging hen as now,"thedestructivenessof undisciplinedyouth"(pp. 19, 18). Conversely,however,the Platonic"environment"lso has its positiveside. Plato'sskepticismand the dia-lecticalmethod of his master,Socrates,have allowed unbelievers romMarius he Epicureandown to Montaigneand to Pater'scontemporary"speculativeyoung man"to find refuge in an "endlessdialogue withone's self,""a habit"of "tentativethinkingand suspendedjudgment"which balances the dogmata of theism and materialism (pp. 177, 194).What is more,the ritualand disciplineof Sparta(somehowmirroredin The Republicas an ideal of harmoniousorm) remain as a tangible"religionof sanity"availableeven to those who have laboredthrough-out the ages"withnoprospectof Israel'sreward" pp. 227, 233). To thesympatheticobserver, hey providea "soothingmentalatmosphere"tillto be foundin the relicsof Christianity.Forthe "gracefulpolytheism" fthe Greeksmergeswith "thedulia of saints and angels in the catholicchurch" p. 33); the "music" f the Lacedaemonians everberates tillin the chantsof the Gregorianmonks; he "hieraticDorianarchitecture"of the Greektemples managesto survivein the "CistercianGothic"ofthe Middle Ages (pp. 278-279).14Accordingto Pater,"the Lacedaemonianswere the hereditary

    13 Although Pater avoids an Arnoldian proportioning of Hellenic and Hebraic "fourths"and "three-fourths"of life, he regards Parmenides as the initiator of a "Hebraism" ofsorts which was to affect Socrates and Plato. Pater attacks the abstractionism ofParmenides, but readily concedes that it made little "claim to touch the affections" asdid "the revelation to Israel"; only Cleanthes the Stoic, a Parmenidean, is able to riseabove his master in his emotional "Hymn to the One," which therefore approximates"Israel'sdevout response to the announcement: 'the Lord thy God is one Lord' " (P&P,pp. 38, 29). Similarly, in Marius, Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic, is described as "a masterin Israel," whose letters have "something in common with the old Judaic unction offriendship" (I, 183, 226); Marius'vague formulation of a divinity, based on his read-ings "in Plato and others, last but not least in Aurelius," is likened to that "reasonableIdeal to which the Old Testament gives the name of Creator" (II, 68).14In Greek Studies and in Plato and Platonism, Pater makes it quite clear that he prefersthe "delightful," multi-colored polytheism of the Greeks to a grey and "repellent

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    and privileged guardians"of that "catholicor general centre of Greek re-ligion"which concerned itself with the worship of Apollo, but "ofApolloin a particular development of his deity":In the dramaticbusiness of Lacedaemon,centeringin these almostliturgical dances,there was little comic acting. The fondness of the slaves for buffooneryand loudlaughter,was to their master,who had no taste for the like, a reassuringnote of hissuperiority.He thereforeindulged them in it on occasion, and you might fancy thatthe religion of a people so strenuous,ever so full of their dignity, must have been areligion of gloom. It was otherwise.The Lacedaemonians, ike those monastic per-sonsof whom they so often remindone, were a very cheerfulpeople; and the religionof which they had so much, deeply imbuedeverywherewith an optimismas of hope-ful youth, encouragedthat disposition,was above all a religion of sanity. The ob-servantPlatonic visitor might have taken note that something of that purgationofreligious thought and sentiment, of its expression in literature, recommended inPlato'sRepublic,had been alreadyquietly effected here, towardsthe establishmentof a kind of cheerful daylight in men'stempers. (P&P, pp. 226-227)Unlike their Athenian counterparts who worshipped Apollo "in anorgiastic, an unintellectual, or even an immoral service," Pater's proto-Christian Lacedaemonians have a "marked preference for the humanelement in him, for the mental powers of his being over those elementalor physical forces of production, which he also mystically represents"(pp. 228, 227). "In furtherance then of such a religion of sanity, of thatharmony of functions," Pater's monastic Spartans embody in their wor-ship ideals only theoretically realized in the Platonic dialogues (p. 227).To Pater, then, it is not the "Ionianideal"reflected in Plato's spec-ulative flights, but the ritual and form of Lacedaemon "which constitutethe other ingredient in a true Hellenism, the saving Dorian soul in it"(p. 24). Pater warns the reader that "the somewhat visionary towers ofPlato's Republic blend of course with those of the Civitas Dei of Augus-tine" (p. 243). Yet he praises Plato's theoretical fusion of aesthetics andethics, and provides a lavish description of the concrete counterpart ofthis fusion in the Apollonian festival of the Hyacynthia, only to assertthat the festival's "harmonizing"of gaiety and "significant mourning"still survive in the Christian celebration of All Souls' Day.It is obvious that Pater believes, with Ludwig Feuerbach, thatreligion is merely the anthropomorphic formulation of man's highestaspirations. Yet, he does not wholly share the German's Christocentric"Religion of Suffering."15For it is the intense joyousness of the Lace-

    monotheism,"nd "its sterile, 'formless, olourless, mpalpable,' ternal dentitywithitself' (P&P,pp. 46, 47). It is thisprofusion f "humanized"eitieswhich,paradox-icallyenough,attractsPater o the RomanCatholicChurch see, e.g., Marius, , 182).15To Feuerbach, he essenceof religionis simplythe essence of feeling; the sufferingChrist,who lacks "thewantonnessof the Olympiangods," epitomizes he highestof

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    daemonian ritual which makes Pater think, in a more conciliatory mood,"of the novices at school in some Gothic cloister, of our own Englishschools, nay, of the young Lacedaemonian's cousins at Sion, singingthere the law and its praises" (p. 224). In Marius it is the visible faith ofthe childish singers who entune a mysterious Jewish psalmody which soimpresses the melancholy young Roman; in Plato and Platonism it isthe "humanised" but disciplined cult of Lacedaemon which best em-bodies the sacramental nature of all human aspirations (p. 231). It isthis "consciously human interest"which attracts Pater not only to Greekmythology, but also to the sacramental art of Christianity, "at least in itslater though wholly legitimate developments" (pp. 216, 145).16A ritualistic cult of form lies at the core of Pater's peculiar "re-ligion of humanity" as the only flexible means of perpetuating an har-monious belief which can withstand the relativity of time and change.But Plato and Platonism is also concerned with endowing this skeletalfaith with a temper suited to its pliancy. To Pater this temper is to befound in his "independent" Platonism, a tradition which he emphati-cally distinguishes from that usually associated with Aristotle, theSchoolmen, Spinoza, Hegel, and all "those mystic aspirants to 'vision'"-"the so-called Neo-Platonists of all ages from Proclus to Schelling"(p. 193). According to Pater, "two legitimate yet divergent streams ofinfluence" emanate from Plato and from the "environment" createdby three of his forerunners - Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Pythagoras -and by Socrates, his master. Plato himself is seen as a reconciler who uni-

    human emotions (The Essence of Christianity [New York, 1957], p. 149). Pater like-wise regards religion as the expression of the higher emotions inherent in "human lifeand its familiar or exceptional incidents, birth, death, marriage, youth, age, tears, joy,rest, sleep, waking" (Miscellaneous Studies, pp. 193-194). To him the historical Jesusis also a symbol of man's triumph over "great sorrows"; but it is the adoration of theinfant Jesus and not the "almost ghastly" image of the crucified and martyred Christwhich impresses upon Marius the meaning of the sacrifice of "a young man" who gaveup, "for the greatest of ends, the greatest of gifts" (Marius, II, 171, 138).16In "Winckelmann," Pater argued that the Pagan "blitheness" or "Heiterkeit" of theGreeks was a feeling far superior to the "worship of sorrow" in Christian art (Renais-sance, p. 225). This position is modified in "Demeter and Persephone" (1876), whereDemeter's evolution is traced from fertility goddess to mater dolorosa. Still, Patermaintains that what has now become the Greek " 'worship of sorrow' as Goethe callsit" was emulated primarily by the painters who produced the pensive Madonnas of theRenaissance, and not by "the gloomy imagination of the middle ages" (Greek Studies,p. 11o). By Plato and Platonism even the disparagement of medievalism is omitted asPater praises "the place occupied in Christian art by the mother and her child," andcondemns Plato's abstracted selection of marriages "after the manner of those whobreed birds or dogs" (p. 258), a remark not unlike those directed at Marcus Aurelius'stoic indifference at the sports of the arena. It is noteworthy that in all of these judg-ments Pater's "humanistic" standards are preserved; he has merely altered the "at-mosphere" in which he has placed them. He has become more and more sympatheticto Christianity and to its "humanized"symbols.

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    fled the ideas of his predecessorsand held them in bond before theirinevitablefragmentationby the Zeitgeist.Pater'sPlato fuses the Heraclitean"doctrine f motion"- a doc-trineopenlyidentifiedwith"theentiremodern heoryof 'development'"(p. 19) - with the Parmenidean"doctrineof rest"or "the immutable"-a doctrineboldly likened to "the revelationto Israel"(p. 38). Thisopposition,denticalto thatdepictedin Marius,17ears a significant e-semblanceto the standardVictorianconflictbetween science and re-ligion. To effect his synthesis of these rival doctrines,Pater'sPlatoreliesona thirdphilosophical ystem, he Pythagorean doctrine f num-ber,"which is creativelyassociatedwith the ideal of Lacedaemon,al-ready described above. The doctrineof numberprovidesPlato withthe "harmony"equired o unitebothextremeswithoutinjury o either.Thisharmony s one of matter and form; t is a synthesisof the Ionianandthe Doric,a "trueHellenism"whichperceivesandembodies n theoperationsof the visible world a symbolof the unseen.Plato'sgenius,then, consists in the magnitudeof his combination,n the successfulfusion of his "visualpower"with hisyearning orthe absolute:"forhim,all gifts of sense and intelligenceconvergein one supremefaculty oftheoretic vision, Oewpia,he imaginative reason" (pp. 142, 140).

    IIIBut if in Pater'spre-Christian, ll-Hellenicsystem,Plato is re-gardedas a sort of paganSt.Paul,the repositoryof the doctrinesof allhispredecessors, n Ur-visionarywho holdsoutthepromiseof "theCityof the Perfect, The Republic,KaXXiroXLs,ranopolis,Utopia, Civitas

    Dei, The Kingdomof Heaven"all rolledintoone (p. 266),18 t is Socra-tes, Plato'steacher,who corresponds o Arnold'sconceptionof Jesus.Here again,Patermanagesto stay clear of controversyby adheringtohis spatialmethod.Arnoldwas forcedto endowhis historicalJesuswiththe vagueattributesof "reason" nd"sweetness,"husplacatingneitherthebelievingChristian, orthe militantatheist.Pater,onthe otherhand,is abletoproducean inoffensive ecular"saint"whois equallyacceptableto the orthodoxand to the unbeliever.His Socrates,ikeArnold'sChrist,17Cf. P&P, p. 48: "The ethical alliance of Heraclitus is with the Sophists and theCyrenaics or the Epicureans; that of Parmenides with Socrates, and the Cynics or theStoics."18Cf. Marius, II, 39, where Marius' readings in Plato and Aurelius arouse his yearningfor "that unseen Celestial City, Uranopolis, Callipolis, Urbs Beata."

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    embodies a "peculiar religiousness" and a sense of "mission" which cul-minate, but transcend Parmenides' more "sterile" search for the "One"(pp. 99, 161, 9), just as, in the scheme of Literature and Dogma, the"sweet reasonableness" of Jesus arises from, but transcends the Hebraicbelief in a "power not ourselves." But while Arnold is forced to dismissthe theological import of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection because ofthe discrepancies within the Gospels, Pater can fully exploit the "historic"significance of Socrates' immolation for an ideal of truth. Pointing to thedetailed account of Socrates' death given in the Apology and thePhaedo, Pater can emphasize the "purely human" aspects of thephilosopher's last hours and can disclaim any similarity to the "onesacred scene to which they have sometimes been compared" (p. 78).

    What then, is the exact meaning held by the sacrifice of Socrates?The philosopher's death, like that of Marius the Epicurean, is by nomeans to be regarded as an act of religious martyrdom. Pater is highlycritical of the "Puritan element" in Socrates' thought (p. 145). Thoughaccused of fabricating a "new deity" and though teaching Plato, "thesensuous lover," to become a "lover of the invisible," Socrates brings no"religion new-given," no promise of divine redemption through his self-immolation. Indeed, it is only Plato's acute "impress of visible reality,"his Paterian responsiveness to his senses, which allows him to transcendhis teacher's "philosophy of the unseen," the "somewhat sad-colouredschool of Socrates," by blending "the material and the spiritual" intoa temperate and artistic whole (pp. 128, 126, 127, 135). Like Marius,Socrates dies as a victim of the relativity of knowledge. In Pater's schemeof things, it is he who brings "philosophy from heaven to earth"by teach-ing Plato (and modern man) that he was to remain "amere seeker afterwisdom he might never attain" (pp. 81, 89). It is his earthly skepticismand not his love of the invisible which initiates the "independent"Platonism sought by Pater.Pater's Socrates thus has a dual effect on his disciple. On thenegative side, his cautious morality stirs up Plato's "religious soul" andstimulates the "mystic intellectualism" of the later neo-Platonists (p.85); on the positive side, however, his relativism, his ironic profession ofignorance, endow Plato with a means of balance: the dialectic.19 To

    19In Marius, both the negative and the positive "influences" of Socrates are evident. The"too incorporeal philosophy" which Socrates leaves behind him (P&P, p. 144) findsa new expression in the contemptus mundi of the glacial Marcus Aurelius, who reflectsthe "ascetic pride which lurks under all Platonism" (Marius, I, 200). Socrates' wryirony, on the other hand, is personified in the figure of Lucian, who demolishes theabsolutist beliefs of a would-be philosopher, Hermotimus, another of Pater's "specula-tive" young men.

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    Pater, Socrates is the initiator of the "dialogue of the mind with itself"which he, like Arnold, regards as an essential requirement for theformulation of modern thought (p. 183):The PlatonicDialogue is the literarytransformation,n a word, of what was the inti-mately home-grownmethod of Socrates,not only of conveying truth to others, butof coming by it for himself. The essence of that method, of "dialectic"in all itsforms,as its very name denotes, is dialogue, the habit of seeking truth by means ofquestions and answer, primarilywith one's self. Just there, lies the validity of themethod- in a dialogue, and endlessdialogue,with one's self. (p. 177)To Pater, the Socratic dialectic of Plato is indispensable for the modernthinker who can believe in neither "the metaphysical reassertions" ofreligion or philosophy, nor in that "sortof certainty which is afforded byempirical science" (p. 194). The abstractions of philosophy and theology,"even under the direction of Plato," are bound to be as faulty as "thepromise of 'ontological' science"; "with our modern temperament as itis,"neither can offer intellectual "security"to Pater's"speculative youngman." It is here, then, that "that other sort of Platonism," a Socraticrelativism, comes into play (p. 195). As used by Montaigne, "amind forwhich truth itself is but a possibility," the modern shape taken by thedialectic is that of the essay, which "came into use at what was reallythe invention of the relative, or'modern' spirit, in the Renaissance of thesixteenth century" (p. 175).20The "true philosophic temper" must reside, according to Pater,in a continuous act of balance and compromise, "a habit, namely oftentative thinking and suspended judgment" (p. 194). Pater's pre-sumptive reader, "the speculative young man of our own time," mustlearn to question the assertions of both science and metaphysics. LikeMarius the Epicurean, he must somehow convert this doubt into a per-sonal creed and thus practice a faith fit for "an age which thirsts forintellectual security, but cannot make up its mind. Que scais-je? it criesin the words of Montaigne; but in the spirit also of the Platonic Socra-tes, with whom such dubitation had been nothing else than a religiousduty or service" (p. 195).

    Negative as this exhortation may seem, Pater does not concludePlato and Platonism with a cult of doubt. The Socratic dialectic merely20 "If Platonism from age to age has meant, for some, ontology, a doctrine of 'being,' orthe nearest attainable approach to or substitute for that; for others, Platonism has beenin fact only another name for scepticism, in a recognizable philosophic tradition"(P&P, p. 194). This new "spirit" and its "environment" are depicted not only in theessays which make up The Renaissance, but also in the incompleted Gaston de Latour(first published in Macmillan's in 1888), where Montaigne, a "two-sided thinker" (p.113), impresses his relativism on a more modern Marius, Gaston, in the role taken upby Lucian in Marius.

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    yields the "temper"or a faith, and to Pater any such faith must befounded on the visible and the tangible. Unlike Marius,where Paterdirects his protagonist o the "atmosphere"f a lost primitivechurch,and unlike Gaston de Latour where he conducts his hero to thepantheismof GiordanoBruno,the "speculativeyoung man" of Platoand Platonismmust look aroundhim in an immediate Victorianpres-ent.21He mustfeed on the sensationsapprovedand testedby the past.It is with this dilemma n mind,that Pater turnsagainto The Republicandhopesto find in Plato's ntenseawarenessof "therealityof beauty,"a correlativeof the "poetic religious system"of the Lacedaemonians(pp. 268, 226).

    IVIn "Plato'sAesthetics,"he finalchapterof Platoand Platonism,Paterfinds a corroborationor his own sensationalismn Plato's viewthat "men's ouls are . . . the creaturesof what men see and hear"(p.271). In a world conditionedby environment,heredity,and the ever-changingflux,the onlyharmony hatis possibleamong ndividualsmust

    arise from the harmonyof their sensations.In such a world, totallydeterminedby phenomenalexperience, he standard xpressions f Vic-torianunbelief- anArnoldian einterpretationf the Bible as literatureor a Positivist nvocationof bodiless"Saintsof Humanity" areclearlyimpossible.It is thusin Plato'saesthetics,or rather n his subordinationof aestheticsto morality, hatPaterhopes to finda way to create a cor-respondingSpartan"atmosphere"orhis "speculative oungman."With a canniness that almost seems Darwinian,Pater'sPlatounderstood he extent to which men are dependenton their environ-ment: "Men,children,are susceptiblebeings, in great measure condi-tionedby the mere lookof their'medium.'Like thoseinsects,we mightfancy, of which naturalists ell us, takingcolourfrom the plants theylodge on, they will come to match with much servilitythe aspects of21 The finished Gaston de Latour would presumably also have ended in the "atmosphere"of a church, in this case, the Cathedral of Chartres. The book opens with Gaston in"OurLady's Church";it is safe to assumethat it would have ended with the protagonist'sreturn to this "edifice" and with his weary death: Marius must return to "White-Nights," the ancestral villa full of funerary urns, before he can succumb in an isolatedhut owned by Christian peasants; Emerald Uthwart comes back to Chase Lodge inorder to die in the "religious" atmosphere of his childhood; Florian Deleal returns tohis father's manor-house, weary of life; Sebastian van Storck drowns in a family lodg-ing, among the "sweet relics" of his mother's faith; the Prior Saint-Jean perishes in thecell in which he has been incarcerated by his order.

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    the world about them" (p. 272). Fully aware of man's mimetic nature,Plato realized the importance of art as a guide to the perception of theideal. Yet art, like nature, was basically immoral, an imperfect vehicle forPlato's idealism, knowing "no purpose but itself" (p. 275). Plato thusimposed a "simplification of human nature" on the founders of his Re-public: he demanded that the art of the City of the Perfect create"strictly moral effects" (pp. 273, 272). He introduced a Spartan "art ofdiscipline" into his Utopia.To recreate this Platonic harmony, Pater's "young man," alreadyarmed with the perpetual skepticism of Socrates, is now directed to the"atmospheres" created by a disciplined past. Pater is fully aware thatthis harmony is artificial. But he argues that it is precisely this artificewhich allowed the inhabitants of Plato's imaginary community toescape, like the Lacedaemonians, from "a certain vicious centrifugaltendency in life, in Greek and especially in Athenian life," a hedonistsort of Hellenism, permitting them instead to follow "some sacredliturgy," the discipline of Pater's "true"pre-Christian Hellenism, but thediscipline also of its later Christian offshoots (p. 273). Having conductedhis reader through an imaginative excursion through time and space,Pater returns to his original point of departure. Symbolic analogues fadeaway and the present again comes into focus. In his conclusion, Pater's"religion of sanity" is finally given its contemporary, physical locality.Its "atmosphere"becomes visible as Pater examines the disciplined artof medieval Christianity with a far greater sympathy than that shownin The Renaissance, twenty years before. Although the great Cathedralsof the Middle Ages still seem to him "a long way from the Parthenon,"Pater reasons that they are after all the evolutionary end-product of "thePlatonic aesthetics" (p. 279). It is Lacedaemon and not Athens, Doriarather than Ionia, moral artifice rather than unbridled sensationalism,which must be held up as ideals:Those churches of the Middle Ages have, as we all feel, their loveliness, yet of astern sort, which fascinates while perhaps it repels us. We may try hard to like as wellor better architecture of a more or less different kind, but coming back to themagain we find that the secret of final success is theirs. The rigid logic of their charmcontrols our taste, as logic proper binds the intelligence; we would have somethingof that quality, if we might, for ourselves, in what we do or make; feel, under itsinfluence, very diffident of our own loose, or gaudy, or literally insignificant, decora-tions. "Stay then," says the Platonist, too sanguine perhaps, - "Abide," he says toyouth, "in these places, and the like of them, and mechanically, irresistibly, the soulof them will impregnate yours." (pp. 279-280)This then is Pater's exhortation to "youth," to the young doubter whowanders throughout his essays and "imaginary portraits": allow yourselfto come under the influence of the moral environment expressly created

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    for you by ecclesiastical art and ritual; if in sympathy with its "soul,"youmay, like Marius, at least succumb to "its saving salt, even in ages ofdecadence" (p. 282). The Ruskinian bias of this exhortation is deliber-ately faint-hearted, coming as it does from a disillusioned sensationalist,yearning for a wider range of experience, but distrustful of the aestheti-cism of a Whistler or a Wilde.22

    Pater thus directs his prospective Platonist to the surviving ritesof the Catholic church, the only remnant of a lost "Hellenic lineage" (p.282), offering an atmosphere full of "the positive imageries of a faith, sorichly beset with persons, things, historical incidents."23Again the tone ismildly apologetic: "The diamond, we are told, if it be a fine one, maygain in value by what is cut away. It was after such a fashion that themanly youth of Lacedaemon had been cut and carved. Lenten or monas-tic colours, brown and black, white and grey, give their utmost value forthe eye (so much it is obvious) to the scarlet flower, the lighted candle,the cloth of gold" (p. 282). It is in these residual acts of faith, in a faintworship of form, that Pater's young man may hope to find "even in agesof decadence" some of the substance of Plato's fusion and thus to get"something of that irrepressible conscience of art, that spirit of control"(p. 282). Plato's reconciliation, however, remains out of reach. For his"vision,"like that of the church, depends on his belief in the Immutable,a belief invalidated for Pater by the destructive Zeitgeist.In his important review of Mrs. Humphrey Ward's RobertElsmere,24 Pater deplored the clergyman's abrupt decision to abandoninstitutional Christianity in order to found a Church of his own. Sup-ported by a relativism which made him quite willing to recognize Chris-tianity as a perpetual "possibility," Pater professed surprise at the easewith which Elsmere's faith was shattered by his sudden confrontationwith the historical Jesus of the "Higher Criticism." Pater's commentshave been attacked as being both shallow and insincere in the light ofhis own, quite pronounced agnosticism.25 A reading of Plato and Plato-nism will confirm, however, that there is no reason to question Pater'ssincerity. In his review, reprinted in Essays from "The Guardian,"Paterdeclared Elsmere's unbelief to be as dogmatic and unbending as ortho-22 With an eye on the aesthetic movement, Pater warns that Plato anticipated but rejected"the modern notion" of "art for art's sake" (P&P, p. 268). Pater's admonishment wastruly "prophetic": he died one year before the two trials of Oscar Wilde.23 "Sebastian van Storck," Imaginary Portraits, p. 98. The last published work duringPater's lifetime was his study of the "atmosphere" offered by the two great FrenchCathedrals, "Notre-Dame d'Amiens" and Vezelay (1894).24 The Guardian, 28 Mar. 1888.25 Cf. Geoffrey Faber, Jowett (London, 1957), pp. 382-383.

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    dox belief: "hadhe possessed a perfectly philosophic or scientific temperhe would have hesitated" (p. 67). Plato and Platonism representsPater's own hesitant endeavor to provide such a temper for the young"Elsmeres"of his time. By convincing these doubters to stay within thephysical confines of a traditional church, Pater hoped to preserve a moreflexible faith than the drab Socialist Christianity preached by RobertElsmere: "it is the infinite nature of Christ which has led to such diversi-ties of genius in preaching as St. Francis, and Taylor, and Wesley" ("TheGuardian,"p. 69).In the final lines of Plato and Platonism Pater casts a longing lookat the "Greekclay" safely stored in the British Museum as a still visible"correlative"of Plato's unattainable fusion (P&P, p. 283). Wearily, heprescribes "patience, 'infinite patience,'" for all those who are tempera-mentally unable to accept the philosopher's invisible world of ideas orthe equivalent "promises"of Christianity (pp. 283, 264). The same airof fatigue and satiety which prevails in the conclusion of Marius perme-ates the end of Pater's last work, as his "speculative" young pupil, likeMarius, is forced to seek shelter in a compound of ritual and skepticism.As Pater possibly realized, it is on his deliberate avoidance of meta-physics that this compound and the supporting framework of Plato andPlatonism rest and ultimately fall. His "religion of sanity"is the productof a reduction. Pater's refusal to consider the validity of Plato's "vision,"his adroit circumscription of the foundations of Christian belief, and hisnon-theological line of inquiry give him the desired flexibility to endowhis young doubter with a cult of feeling, approved and confirmedby theconvolutions of the Zeitgeist. Yet, despite his imaginative enlistment ofthe historical method for the redefinition of a humanist tradition, Paterrebuilds only in order to eliminate and to exclude.

    Plato and Platonism is above all an exercise in tasteful selection,that "faculty of choosing and rejecting"so vividly described in the essayon "Style"as an artistic act of arriving at a preconceived unity of design(Appreciations, p. 26). Paradoxically enough, Pater's most "public"utterance is ultimately confounded by its preciosity. The creed it tries toformulate becomes far more frail and exclusive than the humanist"faiths"of other Victorian thinkers. Forever dependent on the impres-sions of the individual, Pater's "religion of sanity" is perhaps the leastcomprehensive, but also the most intimate of all the personal cults ofVictorian unbelief.University of California, Berkeley

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