Tear. Clear, limpid, saline fluid that, by the movement of the eyelids, is spread completely over the eyeball, moistens the cornea, and keeps it clean and transparent.

In fact, the glass which covers the eyeball is not a solid crystal; it is, I maintain, a membrane — strong and shiny, but still a membrane. It owes all its shine, all its transparency, not only to the aqueous humour that it contains, but even more to another limpid humour, which waters it constantly from behind and fills its pores completely. Without this water, the transparent cornea exposed to the air would dry out, wrinkle, become dull, and cease to allow light to pass through. Now, this water, so essential to the transparency of the cornea for vision, these are tears.

Their source is said to be a flat gland called the lacrimal gland, situated above and outside the eye. See Lachrymal, Gland.

The tears are shed from this gland over the front of the eye through very fine ducts, and the frequent movement of the eyelids spreads them and waters the entire shiny surface of the eye; afterwards they are swept toward the corner by the nose, which is called the large angle, by the projecting edges of the eyelids, which operate separately as gutters and which, together, work as a channel and, at the same time, a siphon.

On each eyelid, toward this large angle into which the tears are swept, are found a type of small drainage well, whose opening is called the lacrimal point. All of these small ducts merge at the large angle into a common reservoir, called the lacrimal sac. This sac empties into a duct called the lacrimal canal. This duct descends, through the bones, to the nose, where it disperses the tears which work together to moisten this organ when they are not too abundant. But when one cries, one is obliged to wipe them often in order to clear away from the nose the tears which then pour there in too great quantity.

The tears that flow sometimes into the mouth pass through sharp holes situated in the middle of the upper jaw, and go on through the cavities in the nose. These holes being always open, allow the residue of the tears to pass into the mouth, as well as the thinnest mucous from the nose.

It follows from these details that when the lacrimal points are obstructed, an outpouring of tears necessarily occurs, and when the nasal duct is blocked, different types of lacrimal fistulae result. Sometimes also by the abundance or the acidity of the fluid, the lacrimal sac comes to be dilated or eroded, which produces lacrimal fistulae of a different type than the others. The cure for them consists in giving to the liquids of the eye an artificial drain, to make up for the natural one that has been destroyed.

There are tears of pain and of sorrow, and how many things can make them flow! But there are also tears of joy. It was these last that poured over the face of Zilia when she learned that her dear Aza had just arrived in Spain: “I hid from Déterville,” she says, “my transports of pleasure, he saw only my tears.” [1]

There are tears of admiration. Such were those shed by the great Condé when he attended the first performance of Cinna at the age of twenty, at these words of Augustus: I am master of myself, as of the universe, etc. The great Corneille causing the great Condé to weep in admiration is a celebrated moment in the history of the human spirit, says M. de Voltaire. [2]

Notes

1. [The reference is to Françoise de Graffigny, Lettres d’une Péruvienne (Paris, 1747). Zilia is the main character and the author of the letters that make up this epistolary novel about an Inca princess who is kidnapped by Spaniards, captured by the French, and lands in Paris. Aza is Zilia’s betrothed, the Inca prince, and Déterville is the French nobleman who captures her aboard the Spanish ship, falls in love with her, and takes her to France. An English translation is available: Letters from a Peruvian Woman , trans. David Kornacker (New York, 1993). The quotation is from letter XXV.]

2. This anecdote is drawn from Voltaire, Siècle de Louis XIV (1733), chapter 32 : « Des beaux arts. » Pierre Corneille’s tragedy Cinna was first performed in 1641 and published in 1643.