sive or deliberate understanding of him.
Actually, these two reactions are coexistent and inextricably interwoven
as the basis of our relation to him. Of course, appreciation and
comprehension develop in quite different degrees. These two diverse
responses--to the tone of voice and to the meaning of the utterance; to
the appearance of a person and to his individuality; to the attraction
or repulsion of his personality and to the impulsive judgment upon his
character as well as many times upon his grade of culture--are present
in any perception in very different degrees and combinations.

Of the special sense-organs, the eye has a uniquely sociological
function. The union and interaction of individuals is based upon mutual
glances. This is perhaps the most direct and purest reciprocity which
exists anywhere. This highest psychic reaction, however, in which the
glances of eye to eye unite men, crystallizes into no objective
structure; the unity which momentarily arises between two persons is
present in the occasion and is dissolved in the function. So tenacious
and subtle is this union that it can only be maintained by the shortest
and straightest line between the eyes, and the smallest deviation from
it, the slightest glance aside, completely destroys the unique character
of this union. No objective trace of this relationship is left behind,
as is universally found, directly or indirectly, in all other types of
associations between men, as, for example, in interchange of words. The
interaction of eye and eye dies in the moment in which the directness of
the function is lost. But the totality of social relations of human
beings, their self-assertion and self-abnegation, their intimacies and
estrangements, would be changed in unpredictable ways if there occurred
no glance of eye to eye. This mutual glance between persons, in
distinction from the simple sight or observation of the other, signifies
a wholly new and unique union between them.

The limits of this relation are to be determined by the significant fact
that the glance by which the one seeks to perceive the other is itself
expressive. By the glance which reveals the other, one discloses
himself. By the same act in which the observer seeks to know the
observed, he surrenders himself to be understood by the observer. The
eye cannot take unless at the same time it gives. The eye of a person
discloses his own soul when he seeks to uncover that of another. What
occurs