"But still," I urged, "even when there appears to be a discrepancy to begin with, don't you think that in the course of years the spirit does tend to stamp its own likeness on the flesh, and especially on the features of the face?"
"'For soul is form,'" quoted Leslie, "'and doth the body make.'"
"Yes," I said, "and that verse, I believe, is not merely a beautiful fancy of the poet's, but rather as the Greeks 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.'