When the eye’s rays encounter some clear, wellpolished object—be it burnished steel or glass or water, a brilliant stone, or any other polished and gleaming substance having luster, glitter, and sparkle... those rays of the eye are reflected back, and the observer then beholds himself and obtains an ocular vision of his own person. This is what you see when you look into a mirror; in that situation you are as it were looking at yourself through the eyes of another. —IBN HAZM, THE RING OF THE DOVE: A TREATISE ON THE ART AND PRACTICE OF ARAB LOVE, TRANSLATED BY A. J. ARBERRY
