Every intellectual product must be judged from the point of view of the age and the people in which it was produced.

The remark expresses a historicist principle: ideas, artworks, and writings are not best evaluated by timeless or universal standards alone, but in relation to the cultural conditions that produced them. Read this way, Pater is urging critics to attend to the “spirit” of a period—its assumptions, tastes, intellectual tools, and social pressures—before praising or condemning an intellectual work. The claim also aligns with Pater’s broader critical method, which often reconstructs the sensibility of an era (especially classical antiquity and the Renaissance) to explain why certain forms and themes arise. It cautions against anachronism and encourages sympathetic, context-aware criticism.