Darwinism stated by Darwin himself · Charles Darwin
REMORSE EXPLAINED.
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 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.” We may, therefore, reject the belief, lately insisted on by some writers, that the abhorrence of incest is due to our possessing a special God-implanted conscience.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.