in this direct mutual glance represents the most perfect
reciprocity in the entire field of human relationships.

Shame causes a person to look at the ground to avoid the glance of the
other. The reason for this is certainly not only because he is thus
spared the visible evidence of the way in which the other regards his
painful situation, but the deeper reason is that the lowering of his
glance to a certain degree prevents the other from comprehending the
extent of his confusion. The glance in the eye of the other serves not
only for me to know the other but also enables him to know me. Upon the
line which unites the two eyes, it conveys to the other the real
personality, the real attitude, and the real impulse. The "ostrich
policy" has in this explanation a real justification: who does not see
the other actually conceals himself in part from the observer. A person
is not at all completely present to another, when the latter sees him,
but only when he also sees the other.

The sociological significance of the eye has special reference to the
expression of the face as the first object of vision between man and
man. It is seldom clearly understood to what an extent even our
practical relations depend upon mutual recognition, not only in the
sense of all external characteristics, as the momentary appearance and
attitude of the other, but what we know or intuitively perceive of his
life, of his inner nature, of the immutability of his being, all of
which colors unavoidably both our transient and our permanent relations
with him. The face is the geometric chart of all these experiences. It
is the symbol of all that which the individual has brought with him as
the pre-condition of his life. In the face is deposited what has been
precipitated from past experience as the substratum of his life, which
has become crystallized into the permanent features of his face. To the
extent to which we thus perceive the face of a person, there enters into
social relations, in so far as it serves practical purposes, a
super-practical element. It follows that a man is first known by his
countenance, not by his acts. The face as a medium of expression is
entirely a theoretical organ; it does not act, as the hand, the foot,
the whole body; it transacts none of the internal or practical relations
of the man, it only tells about him. The peculiar and important
sociological art of "knowing" transmitted by the eye is determined by
the fact that