It is true that the face is the reflexion of the soul.  It is equally true that the carriage and gestures are the reflection of the soul.  Had one eyes, the tying of a bootlace is the reflection of the soul.  One piece of evidence can be used to correct every other piece of evidence.  A refined face may be refuted by clumsy finger-ends; the eyes may contradict the voice; the gait may nullify the smile.  None of the phenomena which every individual carelessly and brazenly displays in every motor-bus terrorising the streets of London is meaningless or negligible.

Again, in observing we are generally guilty of that particularity which results from sluggishness of the imagination.  We may see the phenomenon at the moment of looking at it, but we particularise in that moment, making no effort to conceive what the phenomenon is likely to be at other moments.

For example, a male human creature wakes up in the morning and rises with reluctance.  Being a big man, and existing with his wife and children in a very confined space, he has to adapt himself to his environment as he goes through the various functions incident to preparing for his day’s work.  He is just like you or me.  He wants his breakfast, he very much wants to know where his boots are, and he has the usually sinister preoccupations about health and finance.  Whatever the force of his egoism, he must more or less harmonise his individuality with those of his wife and children.  Having laid down the law, or accepted it, he sets forth to his daily duties, just a fraction of a minute late.  He arrives at his office, resumes life with his colleagues sympathetic and antipathetic, and then leaves the office for an expedition extending over several hours.  In the course of his expedition he encounters the corpse of a young dog run down by a motor-bus.  Now you also have encountered that corpse and are gazing at it; and what do you say to yourself when he comes along?  You say:  “Oh!  Here’s a policeman.”  For he happens to be a policeman.  You stare at him, and you never see anything but a policeman—­an indivisible phenomenon of blue cloth, steel buttons, flesh resembling a face, and a helmet; “a stalwart guardian of the law”; to you little more human than an algebraic symbol:  in a word—­a policeman.

Only, that word actually conveys almost nothing to you of the reality which it stands for.  You are satisfied with it as you are satisfied with the description of a disease.  A friend tells you his eyesight is failing.  You sympathise.  “What is it?” you ask.  “Glaucoma.”  “Ah!  Glaucoma!” You don’t know what glaucoma is.  You are no wiser than you were before.  But you are content.  A name has contented you.  Similarly the name of policeman contents you, seems to absolve you from further curiosity as to the phenomenon.  You have looked at tens of thousands of policemen, and perhaps never seen the hundredth part of the reality of a single one.  Your imagination has not truly worked on the phenomenon.