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The eye is more than a sense organ which can become diseased, but has come through thousands of years of cultural evolution to have a symbolic meaning indispensable to the understanding of certain symptoms. From the intellectual standpoint it is man's most precious organ, because through it reality is more comprehensively perceived. One glance of the eye can tell us more than hours of auditory or tactile description (109). It gives more pleasure than pain because of this distance and detachment from the object perceived. Santayana thought that the infinite distance through which light traveled gave vision a certain primacy in general development. Optical stimulation produces a change in electroencephal-ographic rhythm more readily than auditory stimulation, and as we take into consideration the fact that the eye is, embryologically, derived from the brain, the only part of the nervous system exposed to the outer world (70), we can appreciate its more direct intellectual significance. When we say we understand a thing, we grasp it and see it. The hand and the eye in team work has given man his mastery over the world.
Social relations are made possible through the eye. Schilder (97) notes that imitative movements seem to be due to the fact that the visual presentation of the movements of another is apt to evoke the representation of a similar movement in our own body. In the expression of another's eye we find his meaning and we tend to see ourselves with the eyes of others. Seeing one another is a form of intercourse. Da Vinci called the eye the window of the soul. Kaemmerer (77) declared that the eye forms the bridge between