A few Biami men had scraps of mirrors, about the size of coins, obtained through distant trade, but my impression was that these scraps were too small for image reflection & were treasured simply as light reflectors.

In one village, a patrol searching for stolen salt discovered a mirror carefully wrapped in bark & hidden in a thatched roof. I never learned what role this mirror had played, but I imagine it was interesting, for I saw nothing else in either villages or jungle that provided any means for self-reflection. Neither slate nor metallic surfaces exist and, for reasons I don't understand, rivers in this area fail to provide vertical reflections, though reflections of foliage can be seen at low angles. I doubt if the Biami ever before saw themselves at all clearly.

Certainly their initial reaction to large mirrors suggested this was a wholly new experience for them. They were paralyzed. After their first startled response - covering their mouths & ducking their heads - they stood transfixed, staring at their images, only their stomach muscles betraying great tension. In a matter of days, however, they groomed themselves openly before mirrors.

I suspect this has been a standard reaction throughout New Guinea as mirrors gradually penetrated this island. Nearly a century ago, the Rev. James Chalmers noted that when the Motumotu on the southern coast first saw their likenesses in a mirror, they thought these reflections were their souls.

The notion that man possesses, in addition to his physical self, a symbolic self is widespread, perhaps universal. A mirror corroborates this. It does more: it reveals that symbolic self outside the physical self. The symbolic self is suddenly explicit, public, vulnerable. Man's initial response to this is probably always traumatic.

Added to this, mirrors reverse forward & back: walk toward a mirror, the image moves in the opposite direction. That image, moreover, is greatly reduced. Test this yourself: with a piece of chalk, outline your image on the bathroom mirror.

Mirrors have always been fraught with mystery & fear. We have the story about "Mirror, mirror on the wall," and our folklore warns of werewolves & vampires who, lacking souls, cast no reflections. Mental patients sometimes mutilate themselves while watching their reflections; suicides committed in front of mirrors are far from unknown.

In Nausea, Sartre writes: "There is a white hole in the wall, a mirror. It is a trap. I know I am going to let myself be caught in it. I have ... perhaps it is impossible to understand one's own face. ... people who live in society have learned how to see themselves in mirrors as they appear to their friends."

When mirrors become a part of daily life, it's easy to forget how frightening self-discovery, self-awareness can be. But even with us, in certain psychiatric cases, mirrors can play a role reminiscent of their role when first encountered. I remember a disturbed friend, obsessed with self-loathing, telling me he thought the electric shaver was man's greatest invention: it had saved him, he said, from the necessity of looking into a mirror for the past eleven years.

In the Congo, mirrors were placed in the chests or stomachs of wooden judicial figures. A defendant would be forced to look into a mirror while nails were driven into the effigy. If he winced, he was judged guilty. In other words, his soul, his identity, entered the statue: he put on that statue.

What made this ordeal so effective, so fraught with fear a guilty man might unwillingly reveal himself, was that it created that intense anxiety which always seems to accompany sudden self-awareness.