156 THE DESCENT OF MAN 



past cause of disobedience is weakened. Even wlien 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 Hindu, 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 re- 

 morse. 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, ex- 

 cepting 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 



88 "Insanity in Relation to Law"; Ontario, United States, 18fl, p. 14. 



