Schtitt & Mario's walk: Schtitt the philosopher instead of the king

The scene resets Schtitt from martinet to metaphysician: the riding-crop past has mellowed into "a dispenser of abstractions rather than discipline, a philosopher instead of a king," his felt presence now "mostly verbal." This is what makes him the regimen's theorist rather than its enforcer — the man who supplies E.T.A.'s doctrine of what a body is for, while the prorectors handle "the necessary little character-building cruelties." The pedagogy's author, semi-retired into pure creed.