maintained--and on such
a point they were good judges--a profound and significant truth.
At any rate, I find it to be so in the case of the people I care
about--though there I know Audubon will dissent. In them, every
change of expression, every tone of voice, every gesture has its
significance; there is nothing that is not expressive--not a curl of
the hair, not a lift of the eyebrows, not a trick of speech or gait.
The body becomes, as it were, transparent and pervious to the soul;
and that inexplicable element of sense, which baffles us everywhere
else, seems here at last to receive its explanation in presenting
itself as the perfect medium of spirit."

"If you come to that," cried Ellis, "you might as well extend your
remarks to the clothes. For they, to a lover's eyes, are often as
expressive and adorable as the body itself."

"Well," I said, "the clothes, too, are a sort of image of the soul,
'an imitation of an imitation,' as Plato would say. But, seriously,
don't you agree with me that there is something in the view which
regards the body as the 'word made flesh,' a direct expression of the
person, not a mere stuff in which he Inheres?"

"Yes," he said, "there may be something in it. At any rate, I
understand what you mean."

"And in so far as that is so," I continued, "the body, though it be
a thing of sense, would nevertheless be directly intelligible in the
same way as the soul?"

"Perhaps, in a sort of way."

"And so we should have In the person loved an object which, though
presented to sense, would be at once good and intelligible; and our
activity in relation to this object, the activity, that is, of love,
would come nearer than any other experience of ours to what we might
call a perfect Good?"

"But," objected Leslie, "it is still far enough from being the Good
itself. For after all, say what you may about the body being the
medium of the soul, it is still body, still sense, and, like other
sensible things, subject to change and decay, and in the end to death.
And with the fate of the body, so far as we know, that of the person
is involved. So that this, too, like all other Goods of sense, is
precarious.'

"Perhaps it is," I said, "I cannot tell. But all that I mean to
maintain at present is that in the activity of love, as we have
analysed it, we have something which gives us, if it be only for
a moment, yet still in a real experience, an idea, at least, a
suggestion, to say no more, of wh