As the visual images are the most important of all, the shedding of tears would be an unconscious effort to drive away sad representations, having for its foundation an analogy between the painful sensations and the images. Whatever one may think of these hypotheses, they consider tears as signs of pain exclusively. The augmentation of the lachrymal secretion depends on the increase in the pressure of the blood; now, the circulation is accelerated by joy and tenderness, as is proved by the shining of the eyes. The appearance of tears—not very abundant, however, in such cases—would be the natural consequence. Sorrow, on the contrary, is accompanied by a lowering of the circulation, and very often, in the early stage, tears are entirely wanting. The shedding of tears produces relief, it is a safety-valve; it would answer to a second stage—that of slackened tension—in which the return of vitality has begun. In other words, the tears of joy and tenderness would correspond to the stage of action, the tears of sadness to the stage of reaction. The psychology of tender emotion seems to me reducible to a single question—that of its origin. The description of its varieties is without interest, and may be found elsewhere. We have stated it as simple and primary. Being the source of all altruistic, social, and moral manifestations, it will be worth our while to consider its nature at the period of its appearance. In children, and the higher animals, the first manifestation of tenderness is towards the mother or the nurse. "The relation involved in the sustenance of the child, a relation only a degree less close than that of the fœtus to the maternal organism, constitutes in itself the chief source of the feeling. Along with the supply of nutriment there goes that of warmth, support, or propping, which again is a continuation of the fœtal dependence. This first instinctive or sensuous attachment of the child grows into what we call fondness by the complication of this instinctive feeling with numerous “ideal” or transferred feelings, the product of the many pleasurable sensations, including those of the eye and of the ear, of which the mother is the source."[147] The primary tendency, therefore, is directed, in children and animals, to those who have been pleasant to them, or who have done them good, and from whom they hope to receive it again. This is an emotion which, in Herbert Spencer’s nomenclature, might legitimately be called ego-altruistic, or even one with a marked preponderance of egoism. It must be so, for altruism cannot be innate. ----- Footnote 147: Sully, _The Human Mind_, ii. pp. 104, 105. -----