This feeling, Dr. Bain remarks, “is resolved by a reference to the dread of being condemned, or ill-thought of, by others.”[1270] Such dread is undoubtedly one of the most powerful motives of human action. Speaking of the Greenlanders, Cranz says that the mainspring of all that they do is their fear of being blamed or mocked by other men.[1271] Among savages, custom is a tyrant as potent as law has ever been in civilized societies, every deviation from a usage which has taken root among the people being laughed to scorn, or regarded with disdain. The young ladies of Balonda, wholly unconscious of their own deficiency, could not maintain their gravity at the sight of the naked backs of Livingstone’s men. “Much to the annoyance of my companions,” he says, “the young girls laughed outright whenever their backs were turned to them, for the Balonda men wear a dress consisting of skins of small animals, hanging before and behind from a girdle round the loins.”[1272] By degrees a custom is associated with religion, and then becomes even more powerful than before. Mr. Williams tells us of a Fijian priest, who, like all his countrymen, was satisfied with a “masi,” or scanty hip-cloth, but on hearing a description of the naked inhabitants of New Caledonia and of their idols, exclaimed, contemptuously, “Not have a ‘masi,’ and yet pretend to have gods!”[1273] And, as Peschel remarks, “were a pious Mussulman of Ferghana to be present at our balls, and see the bare shoulders of our wives and daughters, and the semi-embraces of our round dances, he would silently wonder at the long-suffering of Allah, who had not long ago poured fire and brimstone on this sinful and shameless generation.”[1274]