But the weakness of the case is, that instead of emphasising the power of sympathy, the Christian conception of Love, which differentiates Christianity from all other religious systems, Marius is after all converted, or brought near to the threshold of the faith, more by its sensuous appeal, its liturgical solemnities; the element, that is to say, which Christianity has in common with all religions, and which is essentially human in character. And more than that, even the very peace which Marius discerns in Christianity is the old philosophical peace over again. What attracts Marius in the Christian spirit is its serenity and its detachment, not its vision of the corporateness of humanity and the supreme tie of perfect love. This element is introduced, indeed, but fitfully, and as if by a sense of historical fidelity, rather than from any personal conviction of its supreme vitality. With all its candid effort the spirit of the writer could not disentangle itself from the sense of personal isolation, of personal independence; there is no sense of union with God: the soul and its creator, however near they draw in a species of divine sympathy, are always treated of as severely apart and separate. The mystical union of the personality with God is outside the writer’s ken; the obedience of the human will to the divine, rather than the identification of the two, is the end to which he moves; and this perhaps accounts for the drawing of the line at the point which leaves Marius still outside the fold, because one feels that the author himself hardly dared to attempt to put into words what lay inside. And now, as our chief concern is with the literary art of the book, we may turn to consider its main characteristics. “Though the manner of his work,” says Pater, speaking of Marius, “was changed formally from poetry to prose, he remained, and must always be, of the poetic temper: by which, I mean, among other things, that quite independently of the general habit of that pensive age he lived much, and as it were by system, in reminiscence.”