4407. The eye is the noblest organ of the face, and communicates more immediately with the understanding than do the rest of man's organs of sense. It is also modified by a more subtle atmosphere than the ear, and therefore the sight penetrates to the internal sensory, which is in the brain, by a shorter and more interior way than does the speech which is perceived by the ear. Hence also it is that certain animals, being devoid of understanding, have as it were two subsidiary brains within the orbits of their eyes, for their intellectual depends on their sight. But with man this is not the case, for he enjoys the use of an ample brain, in order that his intellectual may not depend on the sight, but the sight on the intellectual. That the sight of man depends on the intellectual is very evident from the fact that his natural affections portray themselves representatively in the face, but his more interior affections, which pertain to the thought, appear in the eyes, from a certain flame of life and a consequent vibration of light, which flashes out in accordance with the affection in which is the thought; and this a man knows and observes, without being taught by any science, for the reason that his spirit is in society with spirits and angels in the other life, who know this from a plain and clear perception. (That every man as to his spirit is in society with spirits and angels, may be seen above, n. 1277, 2379, 3644, 3645.)