Seeing spirit

Von Balthasar summarizes Roman Guardini’s insistence that “form is not only corporeal” by saying “The eye sees the life of plants in their kind of coloration, in the manner of their movements as brought about by air and contact. The eye sees the vitality of the animal. In man, it sees (and does not ‘infer’) the soul in its gestures, expressions and actions; indeed, it sees the soul even before the body, and the body only in the soul.”