"
Such is some very brief and inadequate conception of one of the most
remarkable books of our time, a book "written to illustrate the highest
ideal of the aesthetic life, and to prove that beauty may be made the
object of the soul in a career as pure, as concentrated, and as austere
as any that asceticism inspires. _Marius_ is an apology for the highest
Epicureanism, and at the same time it is a texture which the author has
embroidered with exquisite flowers of imagination, learning, and
passion. Modern humanism has produced no more admirable product than
this noble dream of a pursuit through life of the spirit of heavenly
beauty." Nothing could be more true, so far as it goes, than this
admirable paragraph, yet Pater's book is more than that. The main drift
of it is the reconciliation of Hellenism with Christianity in the
experience of a man "bent on living in the full stream of refined
sensation," who finds Christianity in every point fulfilling the ideals
of Epicureanism at its best.
The spiritual stages through which Marius passes on his journey towards
this goal are most delicately portrayed.
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