Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/381

Rh with mind at the moment when the eyes encounter, and that people whom we have acknowledged in this way stand on a somewhat more familiar footing with us than before the vague bond became established.

We, most of us, feel a hesitation about making our presence known, even to a friend, by any other form of advance. The beggar has long ago discovered that he gains by this most informal method of self-introduction. This fact has been brought home to me of late while I have been interested in ocular expression, and have made a habit of looking—perhaps rather more intently than is customary—at the eyes of persons whom I meet upon the pavement. If any member of the cadger fraternity happens to be on business in the streets, he is certain to regard the momentary interchange of glances as an invitation to attempt some more profitable form of commerce. The commonness of the habit can not be better emphasized than by calling attention to the fact that members of Parliament make use of the same mute telegraphy as mendicants when they desire permission to address the House.

Fencing masters lay great stress upon the importance of pupils keeping their eyes steadily upon those of their opponents. In all probability Nature herself would teach any of us this elementary lesson if we were face to face with a real enemy. I have noticed that all pugilists, trained and untrained, when sparring keep their gaze fixed upon the eyes of their antagonists. That such habits are instinctive is shown by the fact that all apes when they have hostile intentions invariably look steadily at the eyes, and never allow their glance to stray.

When we study the natural history of ocular expression we soon find an explanation of these facts. Obviously the nervous mechanism of such primitive and widely distributed methods of intercourse must be very ancient, and can have but little to do with the higher intellectual faculties. Undoubtedly eye language dates back far beyond the beginning of human speech, and was therefore established at a time when mental processes were infinitely less complex than they are to-day. One must not attribute the superior truthfulness of the eye over the tongue and the other organs of expression to any causes which have to do with morality. Nature knows nothing of ethics as we understand the term, and if she can gain an infinitesimal advantage by deceit she resorts to it without the slightest hesitation. But, unlike many human exponents of the art of lying, she is frugal and businesslike in her output of falsehoods. If it does not pay her to tell a lie her veracity is beyond suspicion. Broadly speaking, the language of the eye is the language of truth, because it was evolved at a time when elaborate lies were useless. When