The words Responsibility, Guilt, Accountability, are taken, like so many other ethical expressions, from Jurisprudence, or rather they come to us from a time when the distinction between the province of Jurisprudence and that of Ethics had not yet been recognized. That I am made accountable for my action means that I stand as the one to whom reward or punishment for the deed is meted out. _For what reason_ the action is rewarded or punished is a question by itself. In relation to Ethics, the feeling of guilt, of responsibility or accountability, signifies that my act is subjected to the judgment of conscience. If I find discord between my act and that which I recognize as good, remorse arises,--a feeling of inner disharmony, unworthiness, and self-contempt which may increase until it becomes the greatest psychical pain. This feeling may be defined, from a deterministic standpoint, as dissatisfaction with oneself because one has not acted otherwise, and the wish that one had done so. This wish arises in the moment of reflection, when one weighs one's act. From the present wish is not, however, to be concluded that one could just as well have acted otherwise _at the moment the act took place_. Such an illusion dates the experience dearly bought with mistake and remorse back to an earlier period. According to the theory of retribution, remorse must be greatest in him who has committed the greatest crime. This is not so, however; since remorse arises from a contrast between ideal and act, which contrast can take place only when the conception of the ideal is strong; the purest and best characters often have the strongest feelings of remorse. Remorse first arises when a new attitude of mind is attained different from that which ruled at the time of the action. Time is necessary for this new feeling to replace the old, if it is to be more than a momentary passion, and during this interval the two feelings are both active in consciousness. This is the time of the birth-pains by which the new character comes into being. The significance of remorse lies in the fact that it urges forward, that it gives birth to impulse and endeavor after a higher plane. Only because remorse is a _motive_, is it of ethical nature.