Chap. VI. WEEPING. 153 



age of 42 days. It would appear as if the lacrymal glands 

 required some practice in the individual before they are 

 easily excited into action, in somewhat the same manner 

 as various inherited consensual movements and tastes 

 require some exercise before they are fixed and perfected. 

 This is all the more likely with a habit like weeping, 

 which must have been acquired since the period when 

 man branched off from the common progenitor of the 

 genus Homo and of the non-weeping anthropomorphous 

 apes. 



The fact of tears not being shed at a very early age 

 from pain or any mental emotion is remarkable, as, later 

 in life, no expression is more general or more strongly 

 marked than weeping. "When the habit has once been 

 acquired by an infant, it expresses in the clearest man- 

 ner suffering of all kinds, both bodily pain and mental 

 distress, even though accompanied by other emotions, 

 such as fear or rage. The character of the crying, how- 

 ever, changes at a very early age, as I noticed in my own 

 infants, — the passionate cry differing from that of grief. 

 A lady informs me that her child, nine months old, when 

 in a passion screams loudly, but does not weep; tears, 

 however, are shed when she is punished by her chair 

 being turned with its back to the table. This difference 

 may perhaps be attributed to weeping being restrained, 

 as we shall immediately see, at a more advanced age, 

 under most circumstances excepting grief; and to the 

 influence of such restraint being transmitted to an earlier 

 period of life, than that at which it was first practised. 



"With adults, especially of the male sex, weeping soon 

 ceases to be caused by, or to express, bodily pain. This 

 may be accounted for by its being thought weak and 

 unmanly by men, both of civilized and barbarous races, 

 to exhibit bodily pain by any outward sign. With this 

 exception, savages weep copiously from very slight 

 11 



