middle-classes were not formerly imbrued, because these middle
classes were then the mob; but reason and time will have changed them.
Their softened manners will soften those of the lowest and most savage
populace; it is a thing of which we have striking examples in more than
one country. In a word, less superstition, less fanaticism; and less
fanaticism, less misery.

_TEARS_

Tears are the mute language of sorrow. But why? What connection is there
between a sad idea and this limpid, salt liquid, filtered through a
little gland at the external corner of the eye, which moistens the
conjunctiva and the small lachrymal points, whence it descends into the
nose and mouth through the reservoir called the lachrymal sack and its
ducts?

Why in women and children, whose organs are part of a frail and delicate
network, are tears more easily excited by sorrow than in grown men,
whose tissue is firmer?

Did nature wish compassion to be born in us at sight of these tears
which soften us, and lead us to help those who shed them? The woman of a
savage race is as firmly determined to help the child that cries as
would be a woman of the court, and maybe more, because she has fewer
distractions and passions.

In the animal body everything has an object without a doubt. The eyes
especially bear such evident, such proven, such admirable relation to
the rays of light; this mechanism is so divine, that I should be tempted
to take for a delirium of burning fever the audacity which denies the
final causes of the structure of our eyes.

The use of tears does not seem to have so well determined and striking
an object; but it would be beautiful that nature made them flow in order
to stir us to pity.

There are women who are accused of weeping when they wish. I am not at
all surprised at their talent. A live, sensitive, tender imagination can
fix itself on some object, on some sorrowful memory, and picture it in
such dominating colours that they wring tears from it. It is what
happens to many actors, and principally to actresses, on the stage.

The women who imitate them in their own homes add to this talent the
petty fraud of appearing to weep for their husbands, whereas in fact
they are weeping for their lovers. Their tears are true, but the object
of them is false.

One asks why the same man who has watched the most atrocious events
dry-eyed, who even has committed cold-blooded crimes, will weep at the
theatre at the repres