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and they feel, (if I may use the expression,) a passion for complying with its dictates.
This truth is extremely obvious in the old black-letter law books
on the subject of trial by battlel. The nobles, in their disputes,
were bound to use the lance and sword; whereas the villains used
only sticks among themselves, “inasmuch as,” to use the words of
the old books, “villains have no honour.” This did not mean, as
it may be imagined at the present day, that these people were
contemptible; but simply that their actions were not to be judged
by the same rules which were applied to the actions of the
aristocracy.
It is surprising, at first sight, that when the sense of honour is most predominant, its injunctions are usually most strange; so that the farther it is removed from common reason, the better it is obeyed; whence it has sometimes been inferred, that the laws of honour were strengthened by their own extravagance. The two things indeed originate from the same source, but the one is not derived from the other. Honour becomes fantastical in proportion to the peculiarity of the wants which it denotes, and the paucity of the men by whom those wants are felt; and it is because it denotes wants of this kind that its influence is great. Thus the notion of honour is not the stronger for being fantastical, but it is fantastical and strong from the self-same cause.
Farther, among aristocratic nations each rank is different, but all ranks are fixed; every man occupies a place in his own sphere which he cannot relinquish, and he lives there amid other men who are bound by the same ties. Among these nations no man can either hope or fear to escape being seen; no man is placed so low but that he has a stage of his own, and none can avoid censure or applause by his obscurity.
In democratic states on the contrary, where all the members of the community are mingled in the same crowd and in constant agitation, public opinion has no hold on men; they disappear at every instant, and elude its power. Consequently the dictates of honour will be there less imperious and less stringent; for honour acts solely for the public eye—differing in this respect from mere virtue, which lives upon itself contented with its own approval.
If the reader has distinctly apprehended all that goes before, he will understand that there is a close and necessary relation between
