Ebook: Conclusion - The Closing Essay of Walter Pater’s ’The Renaissance’

Walter Pater is best described as a true Epicurean, looking back to the teachings of Epicurus (341 - 270 BCE), who proposed that since nothing of certainty could be known about the afterlife, that we ought best spend our days in a genteel pursuit of pleasure. Neither Epicurus nor Pater advocated out-and-out hedonism, nor did they espouse nihilism.

"Great passions may give us this quickened sense of life, ecstasy and sorrow of love, the various forms of enthusiastic activity, disinterested or otherwise, which come naturally to many of us. Only be sure it is passion — that it does yield you this fruit of a quickened, multiplied consciousness. Of such wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for its own sake, has most. For art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments' sake."