Sometimes it is the mere overflow of the soul, the running
over of the cup of reverie. All that one cannot or will not say, all
that one refuses to confess even to one's self--confused desires, secret
trouble, suppressed grief, smothered conflict, voiceless regret, the
emotions we have struggled against, the pain we have sought to hide, our
superstitious fears, our vague sufferings, our restless presentiments,
our unrealized dreams, the wounds inflicted upon our ideal, the
dissatisfied languor, the vain hopes, the multitude of small
indiscernible ills which accumulate slowly in a corner of the heart like
water dropping noiselessly from the roof of a cavern--all these
mysterious movements of the inner life end in an instant of emotion, and
the emotion concentrates itself in a tear just visible on the edge of
the eyelid.
For the rest, tears express joy as well as sadness. They are the symbol
of the powerlessness of the soul to restrain its emotion and to remain
mistress of itself. Speech implies analysis; when we are overcome by
sensation or by feeling analysis ceases, and with it speech and liberty.
Our only resource, after silence and stupor, is the language of
action--pantomime. Any oppressive weight of thought carries us back to a
stage anterior to humanity, to a gesture, a cry, a sob, and at last to
swooning and collapse; that is to say, incapable of bearing the
excessive strain of sensation as men, we fall back successively to the
stage of mere animate being, and then to that of the vegetable.
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