Repentance is metanoia, or “change of mind”; and without it there cannot be even a beginning of the spiritual life – for the life of the spirit is incompatible with the life of that “old man,” whose acts, whose thoughts, whose very existence are obstructing evils which have to be repented. This necessary change of mind is normally accompanied by sorrow and self-loathing. But these emotions are not to be persisted in and must never be allowed to become a settled habit of remorse. In Middle English “remorse” is rendered, with a literalness which to modern readers is at once startling and stimulating, as “again-bite.”

In this cannibalistic encounter, who bites whom?