174 EXPRESSION OF SUFFERING: Chap. VI. 



I may remark that if, during an early period of life, when 

 habits of all kinds are readily established, our infants, 

 when pleased, had been accustomed to utter loud peals 

 of laughter (during which the vessels of their eyes are 

 distended) as often and as continuously as they have 

 yielded when distressed to screaming-fits, then it is prob- 

 able that in after life tears would have been as copiously 

 and as regularly secreted under the one state of mind 

 as under the other. Gentle laughter, or a smile, or even 

 a pleasing thought, would have sufficed to cause a mod- 

 erate secretion of tears. There does indeed exist an evi- 

 dent tendency in this direction, as will be seen in a future 

 chapter, when we treat of the tender feelings. With the 

 Sandwich Islanders, according to Freycinet, 24 tears are 

 actually recognized as a sign of happiness; but we should 

 require better evidence on this head than that of a pass- 

 ing voyager. So again if our infants, during many gen- 

 erations, and each of them during several years, had al- 

 most daily suffered from prolonged choking-fits, during 

 which the vessels of the eye are distended and tears 

 copiously secreted, then it is probable, such is the force 

 of associated habit, that during after life the mere 

 thought of a choke, without any distress of mind, would 

 have sufficed to bring tears into our eyes. 



To sum up this chapter, weeping is probably the re- 

 sult of some such chain of events as follows. Children, 

 when wanting food or suffering in any way, cry out 

 loudly, like the young of most other animals, partly as a 

 call to their parents for aid, and partly from any great 

 exertion serving as a relief. Prolonged screaming in- 

 evitably leads to the gorging of the blood-vessels of the 

 eye; and this will have led, at first consciously and at 



24 Quoted by Sir J. Lubbock, « Prehistoric Times,' 1865, 

 p. 458. 



