"Essays from The Guardian" from Walter Pater. English essayist, literary and art critic, and writer of fiction (1839-1894).

"Gaston de Latour" from Walter Pater. English essayist, literary and art critic, and writer of fiction (1839-1894).

"The Renaissance Studies in Art and Poetry" from Walter Pater. English essayist, literary and art critic, and writer of fiction (1839-1894).

"The Renaissance" from Walter Pater. English essayist, literary and art critic, and writer of fiction (1839-1894).

"Appreciations with an Essay on Style" from Walter Pater. English essayist, literary and art critic, and writer of fiction (1839-1894).

WITH the world of intellectual production, as with that of organic generation, nature makes no sudden starts. Natura nihil facit per saltum; and in the history of philosophy there are no absolute beginnings. Fix where we may the origin of this or that doctrine or idea, the doctrine of "reminiscence," for instance, or of "the perpetual flux," the theory of "induction," or the philosophic view of things generally, the specialist will still be able to find us some earlier anticipation of that doctrine, that mental tendency.