would in no long time be ruthlessly over-run by its parasite, thought,
which might just as well have fed upon a plainer exterior where there
was nothing it could harm. Had Heaven preserved Yeobright from a wearing
habit of meditation, people would have said, "A handsome man." Had
his brain unfolded under sharper contours they would have said, "A
thoughtful man." But an inner strenuousness was preying upon an outer
symmetry, and they rated his look as singular.

Hence people who began by beholding him ended by perusing him.
His countenance was overlaid with legible meanings. Without being
thought-worn he yet had certain marks derived from a perception of his
surroundings, such as are not unfrequently found on men at the end of
the four or five years of endeavour which follow the close of placid
pupilage. He already showed that thought is a disease of flesh, and
indirectly bore evidence that ideal physical beauty is incompatible
with emotional development and a full recognition of the coil of things.
Mental luminousness must be fed with the oil of life, even though there
is already a physical need for it; and the pitiful sight of two demands
on one supply was just showing itself here.

When standing before certain men the philosopher regrets that thinkers
are but perishable tissue, the artist that perishable tissue has to
think. Thus to deplore, each from his point of view, the mutually
destructive interdependence of spirit and flesh would have been
instinctive with these in critically observing Yeobright.

As for his look, it was a natural cheerfulness striving against
depression from without, and not quite succeeding. The look suggested
isolation, but it revealed something more. As is usual with bright
natures, the deity that lies ignominiously chained within an ephemeral