Oliver took his first punting lesson while travelling back to Iffley. He learned the task rather easily, like all physically dependent tasks. The action of the body seemed to restore a sense of homeostasis to his mind. "Thought is never sure of its contacts with reality; action must intervene to render the rhetoric of thought harmless and its emotions sane." idea is recurring in the novel. He uses bodily action to remain in contact with reality via football, rowing, and running. As he gets older he exercises less and uses his body less, thus causing pain in his thoughts and an irrational emotional state (attributing too much control to himself over the world). Peter decides to take Oliver to see his foreign cousin at Eton, an English public school. This is when we first encounter Oliver's cousin, Mario. Mario is younger than Oliver, but he was at least his intellectual equal, perhaps even his superior. He carried on a full conversation with Peter, and Oliver listened. Despite the lack of conversation between the two boys they each felt the presence of the other. Oliver and Mario seemed, from the beginning, to be direct opposites. " is the anti-puritan, the foil to Oliver; his destiny on earth is happiness, and the world, Santayana believes, is better off for him and his kind.