🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Jul31.034401.1978@news.columbia.edu>, 
blz1@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Betsy L Zucker) writes:

>Well, folk etymologies are nice, but here's what the _The Concise
>Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs_ has to say about the windows of
>the soul:
> [...quotations...]
>So actually the eye or face is the interpreter, index, mirror or
>window of the soul or mind.  It's interesting that all these
>expressions and uses do tend toward the view from the outside,
>not the homunculus view from the inside -- the eyes of person X
>show the observor Y what X's soul and mind are up to.  None of
>the expressions look through the other side of the window to
>suggest that the eyes of person X are the windows which the soul
>of person X uses to observe the world.

How about this, from Wm Blake's _The Everlasting Gospel_ (circa 1818):

    This life's dim windows of the soul
    Distorts the heavens from pole to pole
    And leads you to believe a lie
    When you see with, not through, the eye.

As elsewhere in the poem Blake touched upon the varying perceptions of
different people to the same stimulus (mostly the concepts of Christianity
in this particular piece), I think this fits the "person X's soul sees the
world by looking out of person X's eyes" concept.

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George J Perkins     perkins@msupa.pa.msu.edu