and naturally back to the abandoned faith again, but in readopting it he
never surrendered the humanistic gains of the time between. He accepted
in their fullness both ideals, and so spiritualised his humanism and
humanised his idealism. Anything less rich and complete than this could
never have satisfied him. Self-denial is obviously not an end in itself;
and yet the real end, the fulfilment of nature, can never by any
possibility be attained by directly aiming at it, but must ever involve
self-denial as a means towards its attainment. It is Pater's clear sight
of the necessity of these two facts, and his lifelong attempt to
reconcile them, that give him, from the ethical and religious point of
view, his greatest importance.

The story of this reconciliation is _Marius the Epicurean_. It is a
spiritual biography telling the inner history of a Roman youth of the
time of Marcus Aurelius. It begins with an appreciative interpretation
of the old Roman religion as it was then, and depicts the family
celebrations by which the devout were wont to seek "to produce an
agreement with the gods." Among the various and beautiful tableaux of
that Roman life, we see the solemn thoughtful boy reading hard and
becoming a precocious idealist, too old already for his years, but
relieving the inward tension by much pleasure in the country and the
open air. A time of delicate health brings him and us to a temple of
Æsculapius. The priesthood there is a kind of hospital college
brotherhood, whose teaching and way of life inculcate a mysteriously
sacramental character in all matters of health and the body.

Like all other vital youths, Marius must eat of the tree of knowledge
and become a questioner of hitherto accepted views. "The tyrannous
reality of things visible," and all the eager desire and delight of
youth, make their strong appeal. Two influences favour the temptation.