It hovered before his eyes⁠—the image of the human form divine, the masterpiece of organic life⁠—as once upon that frosty, starry night when he had plunged so profoundly into the study of it. His contemplation of its inner aspect was bound up in the young man’s mind with a host of problems and discriminations, not of a kind the good Joachim had need to concern himself with, but for which Hans Castorp had come to feel as a civilian responsible. True, down in the plain he had never been aware of them, nor probably ever would have been. It was up here that the thing came about, where one sat piously withdrawn, looking down from a height of five thousand feet or so upon the earth and all that therein was⁠—and it might be, also, by virtue of one’s physical condition, with one’s body brought, as it were, into higher relief by the toxins that were released by the localized inner infection to burn, a dry heat, in the face. His musings brought him upon Settembrini, organ-grinder and pedagogue, whose father had seen the light of day in Hellas, who chose to define love of the image as comprehending politics, eloquence, and rebellion, and who would consecrate the burgher’s pike upon the altar of humanity.