130 THE DESCENT OF MAN. 



misery. Who can doubt that the refusal to figlit 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 abhor- 

 rence, ill this agreeing exactly with certain tribes of North 

 America. When the question is put in either district, is 

 it woi'se 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."! ^^ J^^J? therefore, reject the 

 belief, lately insisted on by some writers, that the abhor- 



* " Insanity in Relation to Law," Ontario, United States, 1871, 

 pi. 

 f E. B. Tylor in "Contemporary Review," April, 1873, p. 707. 



