Page:The Galaxy, Volume 6.djvu/508



AN, Pliny eloquently said, is the weeping animal, born to govern all the rest. What is more strikingly human than tears? To behold them we sometimes need go no further than the sources of our own sight; often no further than the orbs that fill our homes with the glow of gladness and love, and are themselves the dearest to us of all earthly lights. No one is wholly exempt from tears. The briefest verse of Scripture is formed of the two words "Jesus wept." We all belong to that sad and sublime companionship of sorrow and mystery of which these drops trickle as the frail tokens. The flowers that bloomed at the verge of Paradise blackened beneath the bitterness of the piteous rain shed on them from the eyes of the first human pair when they turned their steps from the enclosure. "My tears have been my meat day and night," sighed the bewailing psalmist. And while these words are perused, in thousands of places the sound of weeping is heard, and noiseless tributaries are swelling the sable river of grief that flows through the base of society.

Tears are the tribute of humanity to its destiny. They are distilled literally from the very springs of our inmost vitality, being separated by the marvellous machinery and chemistry of the lachrymal organs, out of the arterial blood freshly circulated from the heart. Pining grief is pallid, because it weeps away so much from the purple current of life. Whatever, either in the individual or in a nation, causes blood to flow most freely, also tends, in equal proportion, to make tears fall. This is seen on a vast scale in the time of war, when every crimson drench on the fields of battle is followed by a paler shower on the pillows of home. Tears are the safety valves provided when excessive emotion over-excites the brain. Every sufficient exaltation of spiritual action or consciousness sets them in operation. They are, therefore, marks of our mental rank, and belong least to the most obtuse and degraded. No animal weeps save the dog, whose faithful attachments are more than half human; the sensitive and thoughtful elephant; the monkey, that turbid and troublous prophecy and mimic of man; and the antelope family. The sight of a man with clasped hands and streaming eyes, prostrate before an altar, or looking up to heaven in prayer, is unique in the creation as far as we know; though it may be, as Martineau suggests, an attitude copied from that of still nobler beings in higher worlds. The tears of the lower creatures are the moisture of suffering pressed from mortal founts, not the conscious offering of sentiment. And even these big, round, physial drops on the fronts of greyhounds or gazelles, coursing one another down their innocent faces, make a touching sight, allying those beautiful animals to our own nature by the charming grace of their action, and the strange sensibility of their mild, pathetic eyes.

Tears are, for the most part, distinctively earthly as well as distinctively human. The common idea of heaven excludes them, making them unknown to the angels who sun themselves forever in the perfect smile of the Father, with-