In externals the contrast between them is marked, both in respect of physical characteristics and social origins. Olivier is slightly built, pale and delicate. Whereas Jean Christophe springs from working folk, Olivier derives from an old and somewhat effete bourgeois stock, and despite all his ardor he has an aristocratic aloofness from vulgar things. His vitality does not come like that of his robust comrade from excess of bodily energy, from muscles and blood, but from nerves and brain, from will and passion. He is receptive rather than productive. "He was ivy, a gentle soul which must always love and be loved." Art is for him a refuge from reality, whereas Jean Christophe flings himself upon art to find in it life many times multiplied. In Schiller's sense of the terms, Olivier is the sentimental artist, whilst his German brother is the naive genius. Olivier represents the beauty of a civilization; he is symbolic of "la vaste culture et le génie psychologique de la France"; Jean Christophe is the very luxuriance of nature. The Frenchman represents contemplation; the German, action. The former reflects by many facets; the latter has the genius which shines by its own light. Olivier "transfers to the sphere of thought all the energies that he has drawn from action," producing ideas where Christophe radiates vitality, and wishing to improve, not the world, but himself. It suffices him to fight out within himself the eternal struggle of responsibility. He contemplates unmoved the play of secular forces, looking on with the skeptical smile of his teacher Renan, as one who knows in advance that the perpetual return of evil is inevitable, that nothing can avert the eternal victory of injustice and wrong. His love, therefore, goes out to humanity, the abstract idea, and not to actual men, the unsatisfactory realizations of that idea.