us passage:

Given the hardest terms, supposing our days are indeed but a shadow,
even so we may well adorn and beautify, in scrupulous self-respect,
our souls and whatever our souls touch upon--these wonderful bodies,
these material dwelling-places through which the shadows pass
together for a while, the very raiment we wear, our very pastimes,
and the intercourse of society.

Here in this passage from _Marius_ we find, to use Pater's own words
once more, "the spectacle of one of the happiest temperaments coming,
so to speak, to an understanding with the most depressing of theories."
That theory, of course, was the doctrine of the perpetual flux of things
as taught by Aristippus of Cyrene, making a man of the world's practical
application of the old Heraclitean formula, his influence depending on
this, "that in him an abstract doctrine, originally somewhat acrid, had
fallen upon a rich and genial nature well fitted to transform it into a
theory of practice of considerable stimulative power toward a fair
life." Such, too, was Pater's nature, and such his practical usefulness
as what one might call a philosophical artist. Meredith, Emerson,
Browning, and even Carlyle were artists so far related to him and each
other in that each of them wrought a certain optimism, or, at all
events, a courageous and even blithe working theory of life and conduct,
out of the unrelenting facts of existence unflinchingly faced, rather
than ecclesiastically smoothed over--the facts of death and pain and
struggle, and even the cruel mystery that surrounds with darkness and
terror our mortal lot. Each one of them deliberately faced the worst,
and with each, after his own nature, the worst returned to laughter. The
force of all these men was in their artistic or poetic embodiment of
philosophical conceptions, but, had they not been artists and poets,
their philosophical conceptions would have made but little way. And it
is time to recall, what critics preoccupied with his "message" leave
unduly in the background, that Pater was an artist of remarkable power
and fascination, a maker of beautiful things, which, whatever their
philosophical content, have for our spirits the refreshment and
edification which all beauty mysteriously brings us, merely because it
is beauty. _Marius the Epicurean_ is a great and wonderful book, not
merely on account of its teaching, but because it is simply one of the
most _beautiful_ books, pe