At just after nine o'clock on a Saturday evening, in July 1864, Pater delivered his second paper to the Old Mortality Society. Provocatively directed to his close friend Charles Shadwell who had nominated him for the Society, it was an audacious attempt to define a rare type of individual, one who ‘crosses rather than follows the main current of the world's life’ (D 154). It was called ‘Diaphaneitè’. As well as being deeply personal, this essay shows Pater trying to work through what it means to be a subjective individual. Though unpublished until after his death when Shadwell himself included it in Miscellaneous Studies (1895), it is crucial to understanding the evolution of Pater's individualism because it envisages – albeit as ‘a collection of notes rather than a sustained argument’ (Varty 205) – subjectivity as the centre of the individual. The vision of subjectivity and creativity suggested in ‘Diaphaneitè’ would be superseded in The Renaissance. Still, this early work's identification of subjective experience as that which defines the individual is the first step in Pater's internal dialogue on the nature of subjectivity that would continue throughout his career.