One of the deepest and most significant of late forms of sorrow is that for the dead, and its importance is obvious from the fact that a word is especially coined to denote its expression, namely, mourning. Nothing can be more useless than mourning for the dead as far as the individual object is concerned; the most poignant sorrow cannot in anywise tend to reanimate the corpse. However, it plainly serves as an index to the value put upon life, and so in general has a most powerful effect on conservation and upbuilding of life. Other things being equal, sensitiveness to this form of sorrow measures accurately possibly self-conservative effort or effort for others’ conservation, which in a state of sociality, is equivalent in value to one’s self. The lives for which there is the most mourning and real sorrow when death comes are the most valuable to the community, and for the conserving of which the utmost combined effort would be extended. Where life has little value attached to it, sorrow is slight and mourning short. As compared with the savage state, loss and injury to life is infinitely more respected in the great centres of modern civilization—the _nuclei_ of progress. It is because we feel strongly for the safety of friends and relatives that we employ the best devices to insure their protection from injury and death. One who has sorrowed most deeply over the death of a friend caused by his own careless handling of a gun, will for the future be much more careful for himself and others. To be sure we sorrow deeply because we place a high estimate upon the life rather than place high estimate because we sorrow greatly; but if there were no sorrow reaction, there would be no emotion basis for the future caution and care, and it affects our general estimate of life. Thus there is ever a cumulative emotional development.