What makes Jean Christophe's struggle supremely heroic is that he aspires solely towards the greatest, towards life as a whole. This striving man has to upbuild everything for himself; his art, his freedom, his faith, his God, his truth. He has to fight himself free from everything which others have taught him; from all the fellowships of art, nationality, race, and creed. His ardor never wrestles for any personal end, for success or for pleasure. "Il n'y a aucun rapport entre la passion et le plaisir." Jean Christophe's loneliness makes this struggle tragical. It is not on his own behalf that he troubles to attain to truth, for he knows that every man has his own truth. When, nevertheless, he becomes a helper of mankind, this is not by words, but by his own essential nature, which exercises a marvelously harmonizing influence in virtue of his vigorous goodness. Whoever comes into contact with him--the imaginary personalities in the book, and no less the real human beings who read the book--is the better for having known him. The power through which he conquers is that of the life which we all share. And inasmuch as we love him, we grow enabled to cherish an ardent love for the world of mankind. CHAPTER IX OLIVIER Jean Christophe is the portrait of an artist. But every form and every formula of art and the artist must necessarily be one-sided. Rolland, therefore, introduces to Christophe in mid career, "nel mezzo del cammin," a counterpart, a Frenchman as foil to the German, a hero of thought as contrast to the hero of action. Jean Christophe and Olivier are complementary figures, attracting one another in virtue of the law of polarity. "They were very different each from the other, and they loved one another on account of this difference, being of the same species"--the noblest. Olivier is the essence of spiritual France, just as Jean Christophe is the offspring of the best energies of Germany; they are ideals, alike fashioned in the form of the highest ideal; alternating like major and minor, they transpose the theme of art and life into the most wonderful variations.