p. 39.
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.
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