Sight in Savages. 165 



shrinking of the sensitive plant when touched, and 

 Will-o'-the-wisps, and crowing hens, and the 

 murderous attack of social birds and beasts on one 

 of their fellows, seemed less strange and wonderful 

 than the fact that this man's eyes did not correspond, 

 but were the eyes of two men, as if there had been 

 two natures and souls in one body. My astonish- 

 ment was, perhaps, not unaccountable, when we 

 reflect that the eye is to us the window of the mind 

 or soul, that it expresses the soul, and is, as it 

 were, the soul itself materialized. Some person 

 lately published in England a book entitled " Soul- 

 Shapes,'' treating not only of the shapes of souls 

 but also of their colour. The letter-press of this 

 work interests me less than the coloured plates 

 adorning it. Passing over the mixed and vari- 

 coloured souls, which resemble, in the illustrations, 

 coloured maps in an atlas, we come to the blue soul, 

 for which the author has a very special regard. Its 

 blue is like that of the commonest type of blue eye. 

 This curious fancy of a blue soul probably origi- 

 nated in the close association of eye and soul in the 

 mind. It is worthy of note that while the mixed 

 and other coloured souls seem very much out of 

 shape, like an old felt hat or a stranded jelly- 

 fish, the pure-coloured blue soul is round, like 

 an iris, and only wanted a pupil to be made an 

 eye. 



But the subject of the colour and expression of 

 eyes in man and animals must be reserved for the 

 next chapter ; in the present chapter I shall con- 



