Hi folks. Have you ever noticed that the human face is by far the most common subject of art? Not exclusive, of course, but remarkably common. What is it about the face, and especially the eyes? We have lots of other body parts, but somehow the face is nearly always the one we’re most interested in.

The same goes for animals. What we look at first, what especially is depicted of animals in art, is, first and foremost, the face. Some animals don’t seem to have a face – like starfish – and because they don’t, we find it hard to believe they’re actually animals, not plants!

It is believed that the human face is the very first thing a child succeeds in representing when they start drawing. Out of the mess of random lines and shapes and squiggles, an approximate circle, with nearly recognizable human facial features inside it or around it, gradually emerges; no doubt coaxed and conjured along by the parent excitedly saying, “look, there’s mummy” or “there you are my darling, there’s Lee Raphael”.

When we meet someone, it’s always the face we attend to first, always the eyes we watch intently. Lovers gaze pathetically into each other’s eyes, searchingly, longingly. What is it they’re searching, longing for? Surely it is the very soul of the loved one – the fundamental core of their being, their true self. The real thrill of the romantic entanglement is (beyond any bodily entanglement, which is really only, so to speak, symbolic) the soul-to-soul connection. The two shall become one – two souls, that is, becoming one soul.

So if (as many people seem to believe) there is no such thing as the soul, there’s no romantic love to be had, nothing to look for in a person’s face or eyes, and not much subject matter for art to depict to boot! But we know better.

“The eyes are the windows of the soul” is a lovely cliché, ascribed to Shakespeare, or did it first appear in the Bible? “The eyes are the balconies of the soul” (Danté) is even more interesting: like kings and queens, our souls like to come out, from time to time, onto their ocular balconies, to show themselves to the world. It’s why we sometimes avert our gaze from each other – sometimes the soul to soul confrontation is just too intense, too scary, for us to bear.

We are embodied souls. We, living souls that we are, live in the world through the medium of our bodies. I know of no evidence to say that souls can exist without bodies, but I know of no disproof either, so I acknowledge (in fact hope for) the possibility of it. The soul (you might just as well say the mind, or the spirit), whatever stuff it is made of, is clearly immaterial. Does it trouble you to believe in the real existence of something that is immaterial? Well, I don’t think it should.

What about waves? Do you believe in waves? Water waves, for example, like all waves, are completely immaterial. What you see when you look at a water wave is the displacement, up and down, in a more or less elliptical path, of the watery medium the wave moves through. You see the wave, but no you don’t, really. You see the water, not the wave. But you don’t doubt the wave’s existence. What about electromagnetic waves? With them, not only are the waves immaterial, the medium itself – the electromagnetic field – is too. Immateriality squared!

Waves are a commonplace; of course we believe in them. And so too the soul. Even more so, because souls are what we are! If you don’t believe you are a living soul, then who on earth is the you that’s doing the disbelieving?!

Back to the face, the eyes. Our fascination with the face is because it is there, more than anywhere else in our body, that our soul expresses itself in its living engagement with the world. We display our emotions, or mask them, as the case may be. We send constant signals to the world, one way or another, even if it’s just indifference or inattention. We love and hate through our faces, through our eyes; attract people or repel them. We see where people are coming from, and they see where we’re going to. We can read people’s thoughts; you’ve just been reading mine J.

Hope you’ve enjoyed this little rumination. I certainly have. Further reading: Roger Scruton, The Soul of the World (2014), Chapter 5.

 

 

July 2020