s, and that temple of AEsculapius with
its shining rhythmical waters--which attune our whole being, like the
music of the Lady in _Comus_, to modes of _sober certainty of waking
bliss_?

This inborn affinity for refined wholesomeness made Mr. Pater the natural
exponent of the highest aesthetic doctrine--the search for harmony
throughout all orders of existence. It gave the nucleus of what was
his soul's synthesis, his system (as Emerson puts it) of rejection and
acceptance. Supreme craftsman as he was, it protected him from the
craftsman's delusion--rife under the inappropriate name of "art for
art's sake" in these uninstinctive, over-dextrous days--that subtle
treatment can dignify all subjects equally, and that expression,
irrespective of the foregoing _impression_ in the artist and the
subsequent _impression_ in the audience, is the aim of art. Standing as
he did, as all the greatest artists and thinkers (and he was both) do,
in a definite, inevitable relation to the universe--the equation between
himself and it--he was utterly unable to turn his powers of perception
and expression to idle and irresponsible exercises; and his conception
of art, being the outcome of his whole personal mode of existence, was
inevitably one of art, not for art's sake, but of art for the sake of
life--art as one of the harmonious functions of existence.

Harmonious, and in a sense harmonising. For, as I have said, he rose
from the conception of physical health and congruity to the conception
of health and congruity in matters of the spirit; the very thirst for
healthiness, which means congruity, and congruity which implies health,
forming the vital and ever-expanding connection between the two orders
of phenomena. Two orders, did I say? Surely to the intuition of this
artist and thinker, the fundamental unity--the unity between man's
relations with external nature, with his own thoughts and with others'
feelings--stood revealed as the secret of the highest aesthetics.

This which we guess at as the completion of Walter Pater's message,
alas! must remain for ever a matter of surmise. The completion,
the rounding of his doctrine, can take place only in the grateful
appreciation of his readers. We have been left with unfinished systems,
fragmentary, sometimes enigmatic, utterances. Let us meditate their
wisdom and vibrate with their beauty; and, in the words of the prayer of
Socrates to the Nymphs and to Pan, ask for beauty in the inward