Walter Pater's 1873 essays made the case for art for art's sake, for burning with a hard gemlike flame, for filling the brief interval of life with as much aesthetic experience as possible. The book influenced Wilde, the Decadents, the Aesthetes, and everyone who has argued that beauty needs no justification beyond itself. The prose is as polished as the theory demands. The conclusion was considered so dangerous that Pater removed it from later editions. It remains a manifesto for a way of living.