Several critics have objected that though some slight regret or repentance may be explained by the view advocated in this chapter, it is impossible thus to account for the soul-shaking feeling of remorse. But I can see little force in this objection. My critics do not define what they mean by remorse, and I can find no definition implying more than an overwhelming sense of repentance. Remorse seems to bear the same relation to repentance as rage does to anger, or agony to pain. It is far from strange that an instinct so strong and so generally admired as maternal love should, if disobeyed, lead to the deepest misery, as soon as the impression of the past cause of disobedience is weakened. Even when an action is opposed to no special instinct, merely to know that our friends and equals despise us for it is enough to cause great misery. Who can doubt that the refusal to fight a duel through fear has caused many men an agony of shame? Many a Hindoo, it is said, has been stirred to the bottom of his soul by having partaken of unclean food. Here is another case of what must, I think, be called remorse. Dr. Landor acted as a magistrate in West Australia, and relates that a native on his farm, after losing one of his wives from disease, came and said that “he was going to a distant tribe to spear a woman, to satisfy his sense of duty to his wife.” I told him that if he did so I would send him to prison for life. He remained about the farm for some months, but got exceedingly thin, and complained that he could not rest or eat, that his wife’s spirit was haunting him because he had not taken a life for hers. I was inexorable, and assured him that nothing should save him if he did. Nevertheless, the man disappeared for more than a year, and then returned in high condition; and his other wife told Dr. Landor that her husband had taken the life of a woman belonging to a distant tribe; but it was impossible to obtain legal evidence of the act. The breach of a rule held sacred by the tribe will thus, as it seems, give rise to the deepest feelings, and this quite apart from the social instincts, excepting in so far as the rule is grounded on the judgment of the community. How so many strange superstitions have arisen throughout the world we know not; nor can we tell how some real and great crimes, such as incest, have come to be held in an abhorrence (which is not, however, quite universal) by the lowest savages. It is even doubtful whether in some tribes incest would be looked on with greater horror than would the marriage of a man with a woman bearing the same name, though not a relation. “To violate this law is a crime which the Australians hold in the greatest abhorrence, in this agreeing exactly with certain tribes of North America. When the question is put in either district, is it worse to kill a girl of a foreign tribe, or to marry a girl of one’s own, an answer just opposite to ours would be given without hesitation.” We may, therefore, reject