But remorse is an unresisting submission to the verdict of conscience and the consciousness of one's own unworthiness. It is the recognition of the justice of the sentence which brands one, and the constant, anguished realization that one's personality has been deservedly humiliated, dishonoured and deprived of its rights. As a spiritual process, remorse causes the sinner continually to relive the misdeed he committed, while at the same time he is fully conscious of its atrocity. The ego becomes dual, one part active, the other watching and judging. The one again and again perpetrates its misdeed, the other looks on horrified and suffers agonies. It is one long torture and disgrace of self. Remorse condemns the sinner perpetually to repeat in his mind the deed which fills him with horror of himself. This state of mind is the nearest approach to eternal damnation in hell. There is only one means of temporary escape: to extinguish memory by narcotics. That is why remorse not seldom leads to drunkenness. Shakespeare, with a poet's infallible insight into the soul, has grasped and depicted the nature of remorse, the uninterrupted, torturing presence of the misdeed in man's consciousness. Lady Macbeth sees her hands ever stained with the blood of the innocent royal victim whom she herself did not even murder, and she complains that "all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand." Leontes, in the "Winter's Tale," on hearing of Hermione's alleged death, of which he believes himself guilty, mourns: "Once a day I'll visit The chapel where they lie; and tears shed there Shall be my recreation: so long as nature Will bear up with this exercise, so long I daily vow to use it." Remorse is the most effective of the subjective sanctions of Morality; it is almost too effective, for owing to its duration and severity the punishment easily grows disproportionate to the crime. But it has one great disadvantage, it affects only better natures who have an active conscience and spiritual delicacy, while it spares the wicked who have no conscience, who perpetrate their misdeeds contentedly, without a qualm, and regret them only when they are discovered and lead to unpleasantness.