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 (28. Insanity in Relation to Law,
Ontario, United States, 1871, p. 1.), 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. (29. E.B. Tylor, in Contemporary Review, April 1873, p.
707.) We may, therefore, reject the belief, lately insisted on by some
writers, that the abhorrence of incest is due to our possessing a
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