dislike a fair trial.  Most people in fact, in matters of opinion, tend to get infected with a species of Toryism by the time that they reach middle age, until they get into the frame of mind which Montaigne describes, of thinking so highly of their own conjectures as to be prepared to burn other people for not regarding them as certainties.  This frame of mind is much to be reprobated, but it is unhappily common.  How often does one meet sensible, shrewd, and intelligent men, who say frankly that they are not prepared to listen to any evidence which tells against their beliefs.  How rare it is to meet a man who in the course of an argument will say, “Well, I had never thought of that before; it must be taken into account, and it modifies my view.”  Such an attitude is looked upon by active-minded and energetic men as having something weak and even sentimental about it.  How common it is to hear people say that a man ought to have the courage of his opinions; how rare it is to find a man who will say that one ought to have the courage to change one’s opinions.  Indeed, in public life it is generally considered a kind of treachery to change, because people value what they call loyalty above truth.  Pater no doubt meant that the duty and privilege of the philosopher is to keep his inner eye open to new impressions, to be ready to see beauty in new forms, not to love comfortable and settled ways, but to bring the same fresh apprehension that youth brings, to art and to life.

He is merely speaking of a mental process in these words; what he is condemning is the dulling and encrusting of the mind with prejudices and habits, the tendency, as Charles Lamb wittily said, whenever a new book comes out, to read an old one, to get into the fireside-and-slippers frame of mind, to grumble at novelty, to complain that the young men are violating all the sacred canons of faith and art.

This is not at all the same thing as knowing one’s own limitations; every one, whether he be artist or writer, critic or practitioner, ought to take the measure of his forces, and to determine in what regions he can be effective; indeed it is often necessary for a man of artistic impulses to confine his energies to one specific department, although he may be attracted by several.  Pater was himself an instance of this.  He knew, for instance, that his dramatic sense was weak, and he wisely let drama alone; he found that certain vigorous writers exercised a contagious influence over his own style, and therefore he gave up reading them.  But within his own region he endeavoured to be catholic and sympathetic; he never tied up the contents of his mind into packets and labelled them, a task which most men between thirty and forty find highly congenial.