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 manner
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, however, 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 causes, of which fact Sir J.
Lubbock[608] has collected instances. A New Zealand chief cried like a
child because the sailors spoilt his favourite cloak by powdering it
with flour. I saw in Tierra del Fuego a native who had lately lost a
brother, and who alternately cried with hysterical violence, and
laughed heartily at anything which amused him. With the civilized
nations of Europe there is also much difference in the frequency of
weeping. Englishmen rarely cry, except under the pressure of the
acutest grief; whereas in some parts of the Continent the men shed
tears much more readily and freely.
The insane notoriously give way to all their emotions with little or no
restraint; and I am informed by Dr. J. Crichton Browne, that nothing is
more characteristic of simple melancholia, even in the male sex, than a
tendency to weep on the slightest occasions, or from no cause. They
also weep disproportionately on the occurrence of any real cause of
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