It defined not so much a change of practice, as of sympathy--a new departure, an expansion, of sympathy.

It involved, certainly, some curtailment of his liberty, in concession to the actual manner, the distinctions, the enactments of that great crowd of admirable spirits, who have elected so, and not otherwise, in their conduct of life, and are not here to give one, so to term it, an "indulgence." But then, under the supposition of their disapproval, no roses would ever seem worth plucking again.

The authority they exercised was like that of classic taste--an influence so subtle, yet so real, as defining the loyalty of the scholar; or of some beautiful and venerable ritual, in which every observance is become spontaneous and almost mechanical, yet is found, [28] the more carefully one considers it, to have a reasonable significance and a natural history.
And Marius saw that he would be but an inconsistent Cyrenaic, mistaken in his estimate of values, of loss and gain, and untrue to the well-considered economy of life which he had brought with him to Rome--that some drops of the great cup would fall to the ground--if he did not make that concession, if he did but remain just there.
NOTES 21.

+Transliteration: monochronos hedone.

Pater's definition "the pleasure of the ideal present, of the mystic now." The definition is fitting; the unusual adjective monochronos means, literally, "single or unitary time.".