OBJECTS OF THE EMOTION.

127

pletely identified with this sensibility than with any other. In a word, our love pleasures begin and end in sensual contact. Touch is both the alpha and the omega of affection. As the terminal and satisfying sensation, the ne plus ultra, it must be a pleasure of the highest degree.

CHARACTERS OF THE EMOTION.

5. The generic description applicable to the entire mass of feeling comprehended under Tender Emotion is, a massive pleasure growing out of definite relations to persons or sentient creatures, and pointing to the embrace.

Following the usual order, we should begin with a full detail of the OBJECTS or inspiring causes of the emotion. It will, however, be most profitable to give this detail for the leading branches of the emotion separately. As the interest of sociability at large, it is stimulated by one class of objects; as sexual love, by another; as parental love and pity, by a third.

We can readily assign certain sensuous facts and appearances that awaken the tender feeling; but it may be doubted whether they would have their influence except as suggesting personality. The soft warm touch, the pathetic wail, and the colours and forms that inspire the tender interest, are effective only when related to a person.* If this be so, the main and central object is some person; while the personality must be clothed in particular ways in order to inspire this feeling rather than other feelings, such as anger and fear, or rather than none at all.

The enquiry into the modes and aspects of personality that call forth the tender emotion in a marked form, takes a very wide sweep; it does not stop short of solving the grand question-What is Beauty?

The wail of pathos is an association with misery and grief, and has a primitive potency to awaken the feeling. Seeing tears in the eye of another has an irresistible tendency to stimulate the flow in self. Here too, there is probably a deep-seated connexion from hereditary associations. The fascination for clear water and for transparent objects, including much of the beauty of lustre, may start from this origin.

6. Very great pleasures, whether acute or voluminous, prompt the emotion. Under the agitation of extreme joy, the affections burst out with warmth and seek for a responding warmth. The naïve remark of a child, quoted by Darwin, is true to nature. To the question 'What was meant by being in good spirits', the answer was 'It is laughing, talking, and kissing'. Occasions of rejoicing are celebrated by feasts and social gatherings.

It is the paradox of tenderness that pain, no less than pleasure, operates as a remote cause. This is one of the most notable characters of the emotion, rendering it a means of assuaging misery as well as of heightening enjoyment. It is not simply that a person in pain seeks society, and finds comfort in love and sympathy, it is that there is prompted, in certain forms and situations of pain, a gush of feeling that renders the sufferer self-solacing. It must be a kind of pain that does not find relief in volition, nor yet in angry feeling; such pains as are connected with infirmity and helplessness, and not with energy. Naturally, the pains of the affections seek the specific outlet of tenderness.

We may remark a general tendency in massive pleasures to induce tender feeling. Such are the pleasures of slow movements, repose after exercise, repletion, agreeable warmth, sweet odours, gentle and voluminous sounds, mild sunshine. These pleasures are of the soothing or quieting kind, as opposed to the acute or pungent pleasures; they induce the condition of repose, and inspire tenderness. Probably the explanation is, partly the general demand for companionship, especially in pleasures, and partly the suitability of the state of repose to the enjoyments of tenderness.

7. The PHYSICAL side of Tender Emotion is a suggestive study. The connection with Touch has already been dwelt upon. Next is the participation of the Lachrymal Organsgland and sac, which are specifically acted on, and probably combine their sensibility with the general mass of the feeling. We know what is the extreme manifestation of these organs

in grief; we may infer their influence in other degrees and modes of the feeling.

Any one that follows Mr. Darwin's elaborate investigation of the causes of Tears will see that the phenomenon is not confined to any one emotion of the mind. The primary occasion seems to be pain, for which the flow of tears is a marked relief (by lessening, as Spencer thinks, the congestion of the brain): although it is curious that infants, for some time, cannot shed tears; they can only scream when they are in suffering. A remote consequence of prolonged screaming, according to Mr. Darwin, is to stimulate the lachrymal glands. The effect also follows in laughter, where the violence of the expression, although joyful, prompts the effusion of tears. Being thus an assuagement in pain, and an adjunct in pleasure, the original purpose of tears, in keeping the eye moist and free from irritating particles, is no longer the main function.

Looking at both occasions-pain and pleasure-the flow of tears is pleasurable rather than otherwise. But the effect is one of relaxation and prostration, as opposed to the energetic displays. When we are exhausted, baffled, forlorn, this relief is sought; it is the outlet of weakness and passivity, and is associated with a kind of indolent self-indulgence, and an inactivity the reverse of masterly.

But now we must ask what is the link of connection between those circumstances and the tender feeling in particular? It is in pity for others, more than in the pains of self, that there is a ready prompting to tears. The appropriating of the effect to the pains of the affections is as yet. without any explanation. There appears to be something common to the two situations-the shedding of tears and the tender relationship-in the fact of passivity and quiescence, as opposed to the active and energetic attitude, and that is the only solution of the difficulty that can be offered at present. 8. Following on Tears, although still later in being acquired by children, is Sobbing, a spasmodic movement of the glottis. It takes place (according to Gratiolet, quoted by Darwin) at

the moment when the spasmodic inspiration conquers the glottis, and the air rushes into the chest. Darwin thinks that it is in part due to children having some power to command their vocal organs and stop their screams; but from having less power over their respiratory muscles, these continue to act in a voluntary or spasmodic manner, after having been brought into violent action' (Expression', p. 157). He adds 'sobbing seems to be peculiar to the human species'.

Like the shedding of tears, sobbing is at first connected with pain generally; it is not, however, primarily an accompaniment of pleasurable outbursts. In the final development, it equally lends itself to tender feeling. The indescribable choking sensation in the throat, which arises on a sudden display of generous emotion, is an incipient sob. The luxury of pity and grief is the massive sensibility of incipient sobbing and tears. Both expressions are associated with weakness, or the remission and renunciation of active energy. When our enemy unexpectedly performs a friendly act, there is, as it were, a breaking down of our attitude of hostile activity; and the exchanging of this for the tender sentiment appropriate to the action specifically stimulates these expressions.

The mammary secretion in women would seem to have a sensibility that enters into the aggregate of tender feeling. The feminine constitution on the whole, and certain well-recognized varieties of the constitution of the male sex, are favourable to the emotion; circumstances tending to show that the sense organs by themselves are not the exclusive foundations of it, but that the interior organic functions participate in a way that cannot be precisely described. The analogy of the sexual feeling strongly supports the assumption.

9. On the MENTAL side, the Tender Emotion has been already characterized generally, and will be described more specifically under the several kinds. To say that it is a massive feeling, is to say that it is an emotion, and not a sensation; for emotions, although they may vary among themselves, cannot be acute. I have already adverted to the remarkable connexion between the emotion and passivity, repose, or weak

CONNECTION WITH WEAKNESS.

131

ness. Anger, the fighting passion, is allied with activity and energy; love, the amicable passion, flourishes in the remission of the active energies, and is suited to the lowest stages of prostration and weakness. It is thus the refuge after toil, the solace of the sick bed, and the emotion of declining years. In its development, as we shall see presently, the element of helplessness is present in a marked degree; and the only display of strength that it admits of, is the exercise of protectorship. In the moments of affection, the sword is sheathed and the fighting energies remitted on both sides; the attitude is mutual trust, dispensing with the very thought of warlike precaution.

It must not, however, be thought that the emotion can be sustained as a gratification of life, without being supported by the kind of physical vitality suitable to its manner of existence. True, that support is independent of muscular energy and the corresponding nervous energy of the motor centres; but in other organs, and in other parts of the brain, there must be a reserve of power to respond to the stimulations of tenderness. There are modes of weakness 'too deep for tears'; where the only manifestation possible is a faint smile in return for some great service of alleviation. In many instances, loss of health tends to peevish irritability, and disinclines to tenderness even under the bestowal of much loving attention.

SPECIES OF TENDER EMOTION.

The Interest of Sociability at Large.

10. This is the department of feeling supposed to grow out of the gregarious position, under the relationship of substantial equality. We may typify it by Fraternity.

A very large amount of our interest and enjoyment in society is unconnected with either sexual feeling or parental feeling; and the objects or stimulants of such interest must be sought apart from those two springs of emotion.

The gregarious position, as already described, assumes mutual help or protection, and a sense of the gain or benefit of companionship. There must be farther assumed, as the