As a matter of fact this doctrine is merely the esthetic version of the rather crude mechanistic materialism which our grandfathers thought was the final conclusion of science. The connection is made evident in the famous “_Conclusions_” to “_The Renaissance_” which Walter Pater wrote in 1868, and then omitted from the second edition because “it might possibly mislead some of those young men into whose hands it might fall.” In this [p107] essay there was the startling, though it is now hackneyed, assertion that “to burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life,” and that “of this wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for art’s sake, has most; for art comes to you professing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments’ sake.” What is never quoted, and is apparently forgotten, is the reasoning by which Pater arrived at the conclusion that momentary ecstasy is the end and aim of life. It is, if we turn back a few pages, that scientific analysis has reduced everything to a mere swarm of whirling atoms, upon which consciousness discerns impressions that are “unstable, flickering, inconsistent.” It was out of this misunderstanding of the nature of scientific concepts that Pater developed his theory of art for the moment’s sake. I dwell upon this only in order to show that what appeared to be an estheticism divorced from all human concern was really a somewhat casual by-product of a fashionable misunderstanding at the time Pater was writing. We should find that to-day equally far-reaching conclusions are arrived at by half-understood popularizations of Bergson or Freud. I venture to believe that any theory of art is inevitably implicated in some philosophy of life, and that the only question is whether the artist is conscious or unconscious of the theory he is acting upon. For unless the artist deals with purely logical essences, provided he observes and perceives anything in the outer world, no matter how he represents it or symbolizes it or comments upon it, there must be implicit in it some attitude [p108] toward the meaning of existence. If his conclusion is that human existence has no meaning, that, too, is an attitude toward the meaning of existence. The mediæval artist worked on much less tangled premises. He painted pictures which illustrated the great hopes and fears of Christendom. But he did not himself attempt to formulate those hopes and fears. He accepted them more or less ready made, understanding them and believing in them because, as a child of his age, they were his hopes and fears. But because they existed and were there for him to work upon, he could put his whole energy into realizing them passionately. The modern artist would like to have the same freedom from preoccupation, but he cannot have it. He has first to decide what it is that he shall passionately realize.