Up till this time there is little hint of the line on which he was afterwards to develop. Such attempts as he had made in the direction of literary expression were mostly destroyed by himself at a later date; the only thing which survives is a curious little study called _Diaphaneitè_, which is dated July 1864, and is now included in the _Miscellaneous Studies_. This was written as a paper to be read aloud to a small society called the “Old Mortality,” of which he was a member, and to which many remarkable men belonged. The germ of his later writings can here be clearly discerned, but there is a certain dry compression about the little essay which is very unlike the later ornate manner. It is crammed almost too full of thought, and the evolution has a certain uneasiness arising from the omission of easy transitions. In the essay Pater endeavours to indicate a certain type of character presenting neither breadth nor colour, but a narrow and potent sincerity. “That fine edge of light, where the elements of our moral nature refine themselves to the burning point.” “It seeks to value everything at its eternal worth, not adding to it, or taking from it, the amount of influence it may have for or against its own special scheme of life.” “Its ethical result is an intellectual guilelessness, or integrity, that instinctively prefers what is direct and clear, lest one’s own confusion and intransparency should hinder the transmission from without of light that is not yet inward.”[1] [1] One circumstance, which gives the piece a special and personal interest, deserves to be mentioned. It is not disputed that the temperament there indicated was carefully delineated from Pater’s intimate friend, C. L. Shadwell, now Provost of Oriel. In such strict compressed sentences Pater traces his ideal of intellectual and moral sincerity; but the value of the paper is that, in the first place, it shows a power of acute and subtle psychological analysis, and in the second place it expresses with difficult wistfulness the ideal with which the young student meant to approach the world. To that ideal he was unfailingly true. He meant to know, to weigh, to consider; not to see things through the eyes of others, but to follow step by step the golden clue that ran for him through the darkness. It indicates a fearlessness, an independence of mind, which few achieve so early, and which fewer still have the patience to follow out. In these years Pater’s chief interest, apart from his prescribed work, was in philosophy, which naturally led him to the study of German authors; and here he fell under the influence of Goethe. Goethe came to be for Pater the “true illustration of the speculative temper,” “one to whom every moment of life brought its contribution of experimental, individual knowledge; by whom no touch of the world of form, colour, and passion was disregarded.”