Communities
It would seem that men employ two very distinct methods in the public
estimation *a of the actions of their fellowmen; at one time they judge
them by those simple notions of right and wrong which are diffused
all over the world; at another they refer their decision to a few very
special notions which belong exclusively to some particular age and
country. It often happens that these two rules differ; they sometimes
conflict: but they are never either entirely identified or entirely
annulled by one another. Honor, at the periods of its greatest power,
sways the will more than the belief of men; and even whilst they yield
without hesitation and without a murmur to its dictates, they feel
notwithstanding, by a dim but mighty instinct, the existence of a more
general, more ancient, and more holy law, which they sometimes disobey
although they cease not to acknowledge it. Some actions have been held
to be at the same time virtuous and dishonorable--a refusal to fight a
duel is a case in point.
[Footnote a: The word "honor" is not always used in the same sense
either in French or English. I. It first signifies the dignity, glory,
or reverence which a man receives from his kind; and in this sense a
man is said to acquire honor. 2. Honor signifies the aggregate of those
rules by the assistance of which this dignity, glory, or reverence is
obtained. Thus we say that a man has always strictly obeyed the laws
of honor; or a man has violated his honor. In this chapter the word is
always used in the latter sense.]
I think these peculiarities may be otherwise explained than by the mere
caprices of certain individuals and nations, as has hitherto been
the customary mode of reasoning on the subject. Mankind is subject
to general and lasting wants that have engendered moral laws, to the
neglect of which men have ever and in all places attached the notion of
censure and shame: to infringe them was "to do ill"--"to do well" was to
conform to them. Within the bosom of this vast association of the human
race, lesser associations have been formed which are called nations;
and amidst these nations further subdivisions have assumed the names
of classes or castes. Each of these associations forms, as it were,
a separate species of the human race; and though it has no essential
difference from the mass of mankind, to a certain extent it stands apart
and has certain wants peculiar to itself. To these special wants must
be attributed the modifications which affect in various degrees and
in different countries the mode of considering human actions, and
the estimate which ought to be formed of them. It is the general and
permanent interest of mankind that men should not kill each other: but
it may happen to be the peculiar and temporary interest of a people or a
class to justify, or even to honor, homicide.
Honor is simply that peculiar rule, founded upon a peculiar state of
society, by the application of which a people or a class allot praise or
blame. Nothing is more unproductive to the mind than an abstract idea; I
therefore hasten to call in the aid of facts and examples to illustrate
my meaning.
I select the most extraordinary kind of honor which was ever known
in the world, and that which we are best acquainted with, viz.,
aristocratic honor springing out of feudal society. I shall explain it
by means of the principle already laid down, and I shall explain the
principle by means of the illustration. I am not here led to inquire
when and how the aristocracy of the Middle Ages came into existence,
why it was so deeply severed from the remainder of the nation, or
what founded and consolidated its power. I take its existence as an
established fact, and I am endeavoring to account for the peculiar view
which it took of the greater part of human actions. The first thing that
strikes me is, that in the feudal world actions were not always praised
or blamed with reference to their intrinsic worth, but that they were
sometimes appreciated exclusively with reference to the person who
was the actor or the object of them, which is repugnant to the general
conscience of mankind. Thus some of the actions which were indifferent
on the part of a man in humble life, dishonored a noble; others changed
their whole character according as the person aggrieved by them belonged
or did not belong to the aristocracy. When these different notions first
arose, the nobility formed a distinct body amidst the people, which
it commanded from the inaccessible heights where it was ensconced. To
maintain this peculiar position, which constituted its strength, it not
only required political privileges, but it required a standard of right
and wrong for its own especial use. That some particular virtue or vice
belonged to the nobility rather than to the humble classes--that certain
actions were guiltless when they affected the villain, which were
criminal when they touched the noble--these were often arbitrary
matters; but that honor or shame should be attached to a man's actions
according to his condition, was a result of the internal constitution
of an aristocratic community. This has been actually the case in all
the countries which have had an aristocracy; as long as a trace of the
principle remains, these peculiarities will still exist; to debauch a
woman of color scarcely injures the reputation of an American--to marry
her dishonors him.
In some cases feudal honor enjoined revenge, and stigmatized the
forgiveness of insults; in others it imperiously commanded men to
conquer their own passions, and imposed forgetfulness of self. It did
not make humanity or kindness its law, but it extolled generosity; it
set more store on liberality than on benevolence; it allowed men to
enrich themselves by gambling or by war, but not by labor; it preferred
great crimes to small earnings; cupidity was less distasteful to it
than avarice; violence it often sanctioned, but cunning and treachery it
invariably reprobated as contemptible. These fantastical notions did not
proceed exclusively from the caprices of those who entertained them. A
class which has succeeded in placing itself at the head of and above
all others, and which makes perpetual exertions to maintain this lofty
position, must especially honor those virtues which are conspicuous for
their dignity and splendor, and which may be easily combined with pride
and the love of power. Such men would not hesitate to invert the natural
order of the conscience in order to give those virtues precedence before
all others. It may even be conceived that some of the more bold and
brilliant vices would readily be set above the quiet, unpretending
virtues. The very existence of such a class in society renders these
things unavoidable.
The nobles of the Middle Ages placed military courage foremost amongst
virtues, and in lieu of many of them. This was again a peculiar opinion
which arose necessarily from the peculiarity of the state of society.
Feudal aristocracy existed by war and for war; its power had been
founded by arms, and by arms that power was maintained; it therefore
required nothing more than military courage, and that quality was
naturally exalted above all others; whatever denoted it, even at the
expense of reason and humanity, was therefore approved and frequently
enjoined by the manners of the time. Such was the main principle; the
caprice of man was only to be traced in minuter details. That a man
should regard a tap on the cheek as an unbearable insult, and should be
obliged to kill in single combat the person who struck him thus lightly,
is an arbitrary rule; but that a noble could not tranquilly receive an
insult, and was dishonored if he allowed himself to take a blow without
fighting, were direct consequences of the fundamental principles and the
wants of military aristocracy.
Thus it was true to a certain extent to assert that the laws of honor
were capricious; but these caprices of honor were always confined within
certain necessary limits. The peculiar rule, which was called honor by
our forefathers, is so far from being an arbitrary law in my eyes, that
I would readily engage to ascribe its most incoherent and fantastical
injunctions to a small number of fixed and invariable wants inherent in
feudal society.
If I were to trace the notion of feudal honor into the domain of
politics, I should not find it more difficult to explain its dictates.
The state of society and the political institutions of the Middle Ages
were such, that the supreme power of the nation never governed the
community directly. That power did not exist in the eyes of the people:
every man looked up to a certain individual whom he was bound to obey;
by that intermediate personage he was connected with all the others.
Thus in feudal society the whole system of the commonwealth rested upon
the sentiment of fidelity to the person of the lord: to destroy that
sentiment was to open the sluices of anarchy. Fidelity to a political
superior was, moreover, a sentiment of which all the members of the
aristocracy had constant opportunities of estimating the importance; for
every one of them was a vassal as well as a lord, and had to command as
well as to obey. To remain faithful to the lord, to sacrifice one's self
for him if called upon, to share his good or evil fortunes, to stand
by him in his undertakings whatever they might be--such were the first
injunctions of feudal honor in relation to the political institutions
of those times. The treachery of a vassal was branded with extraordinary
severity by public opinion, and a name of peculiar infamy was invented
for the offence which was called "felony."
On the contrary, few traces are to be found in the Middle Ages of the
passion which constituted the life of the nations of antiquity--I mean
patriotism; the word itself is not of very ancient date in the language.
*b Feudal institutions concealed the country at large from men's sight,
and rendered the love of it less necessary. The nation was forgotten in
the passions which attached men to persons. Hence it was no part of
the strict law of feudal honor to remain faithful to one's country. Not
indeed that the love of their country did not exist in the hearts of
our forefathers; but it constituted a dim and feeble instinct, which has
grown more clear and strong in proportion as aristocratic classes have
been abolished, and the supreme power of the nation centralized. This
may be clearly seen from the contrary judgments which European nations
have passed upon the various events of their histories, according to the
generations by which such judgments have been formed. The circumstance
which most dishonored the Constable de Bourbon in the eyes of his
contemporaries was that he bore arms against his king: that which most
dishonors him in our eyes, is that he made war against his country; we
brand him as deeply as our forefathers did, but for different reasons.
[Footnote b: Even the word "patrie" was not used by the French writers
until the sixteenth century.]
I have chosen the honor of feudal times by way of illustration of my
meaning, because its characteristics are more distinctly marked and more
familiar to us than those of any other period; but I might have taken
an example elsewhere, and I should have reached the same conclusion by
a different road. Although we are less perfectly acquainted with the
Romans than with our own ancestors, yet we know that certain peculiar
notions of glory and disgrace obtained amongst them, which were not
solely derived from the general principles of right and wrong. Many
human actions were judged differently, according as they affected a
Roman citizen or a stranger, a freeman or a slave; certain vices were
blazoned abroad, certain virtues were extolled above all others. "In
that age," says Plutarch in the life of Coriolanus, "martial prowess
was more honored and prized in Rome than all the other virtues, insomuch
that it was called virtus, the name of virtue itself, by applying the
name of the kind to this particular species; so that virtue in Latin was
as much as to say valor." Can anyone fail to recognize the peculiar
want of that singular community which was formed for the conquest of the
world?
Any nation would furnish us with similar grounds of observation; for,
as I have already remarked, whenever men collect together as a distinct
community, the notion of honor instantly grows up amongst them; that
is to say, a system of opinions peculiar to themselves as to what is
blamable or commendable; and these peculiar rules always originate
in the special habits and special interests of the community. This is
applicable to a certain extent to democratic communities as well as
to others, as we shall now proceed to prove by the example of the
Americans. *c Some loose notions of the old aristocratic honor of Europe
are still to be found scattered amongst the opinions of the Americans;
but these traditional opinions are few in number, they have but little
root in the country, and but little power. They are like a religion
which has still some temples left standing, though men have ceased
to believe in it. But amidst these half-obliterated notions of exotic
honor, some new opinions have sprung up, which constitute what may be
termed in our days American honor. I have shown how the Americans are
constantly driven to engage in commerce and industry. Their origin,
their social condition, their political institutions, and even the spot
they inhabit, urge them irresistibly in this direction. Their present
condition is then that of an almost exclusively manufacturing and
commercial association, placed in the midst of a new and boundless
country, which their principal object is to explore for purposes of
profit. This is the characteristic which most peculiarly distinguishes
the American people from all others at the present time. All those quiet
virtues which tend to give a regular movement to the community, and to
encourage business, will therefore be held in peculiar honor by that
people, and to neglect those virtues will be to incur public contempt.
All the more turbulent virtues, which often dazzle, but more frequently
disturb society, will on the contrary occupy a subordinate rank in the
estimation of this same people: they may be neglected without forfeiting
the esteem of the community--to acquire them would perhaps be to run a
risk of losing it.
[Footnote c: I speak here of the Americans inhabiting those States where
slavery does not exist; they alone can be said to present a complete
picture of democratic society.]
The Americans make a no less arbitrary classification of men's vices.
There are certain propensities which appear censurable to the general
reason and the universal conscience of mankind, but which happen to
agree with the peculiar and temporary wants of the American community:
these propensities are lightly reproved, sometimes even encouraged; for
instance, the love of wealth and the secondary propensities connected
with it may be more particularly cited. To clear, to till, and to
transform the vast uninhabited continent which is his domain, the
American requires the daily support of an energetic passion; that
passion can only be the love of wealth; the passion for wealth is
therefore not reprobated in America, and provided it does not go beyond
the bounds assigned to it for public security, it is held in honor.
The American lauds as a noble and praiseworthy ambition what our own
forefathers in the Middle Ages stigmatized as servile cupidity, just
as he treats as a blind and barbarous frenzy that ardor of conquest and
martial temper which bore them to battle. In the United States fortunes
are lost and regained without difficulty; the country is boundless, and
its resources inexhaustible. The people have all the wants and cravings
of a growing creature; and whatever be their efforts, they are always
surrounded by more than they can appropriate. It is not the ruin of a
few individuals which may be soon repaired, but the inactivity and
sloth of the community at large which would be fatal to such a people.
Boldness of enterprise is the foremost cause of its rapid progress, its
strength, and its greatness. Commercial business is there like a vast
lottery, by which a small number of men continually lose, but the State
is always a gainer; such a people ought therefore to encourage and do
honor to boldness in commercial speculations. But any bold speculation
risks the fortune of the speculator and of all those who put their trust
in him. The Americans, who make a virtue of commercial temerity, have
no right in any case to brand with disgrace those who practise it. Hence
arises the strange indulgence which is shown to bankrupts in the United
States; their honor does not suffer by such an accident. In this respect
the Americans differ, not only from the nations of Europe, but from all
the commercial nations of our time, and accordingly they resemble none
of them in their position or their wants.
In America all those vices which tend to impair the purity of morals,
and to destroy the conjugal tie, are treated with a degree of severity
which is unknown in the rest of the world. At first sight this seems
strangely at variance with the tolerance shown there on other subjects,
and one is surprised to meet with a morality so relaxed and so austere
amongst the selfsame people. But these things are less incoherent
than they seem to be. Public opinion in the United States very gently
represses that love of wealth which promotes the commercial greatness
and the prosperity of the nation, and it especially condemns that laxity
of morals which diverts the human mind from the pursuit of well-being,
and disturbs the internal order of domestic life which is so necessary
to success in business. To earn the esteem of their countrymen, the
Americans are therefore constrained to adapt themselves to orderly
habits--and it may be said in this sense that they make it a matter of
honor to live chastely.
On one point American honor accords with the notions of honor
acknowledged in Europe; it places courage as the highest virtue, and
treats it as the greatest of the moral necessities of man; but the
notion of courage itself assumes a different aspect. In the United
States martial valor is but little prized; the courage which is best
known and most esteemed is that which emboldens men to brave the
dangers of the ocean, in order to arrive earlier in port--to support the
privations of the wilderness without complaint, and solitude more cruel
than privations--the courage which renders them almost insensible to the
loss of a fortune laboriously acquired, and instantly prompts to fresh
exertions to make another. Courage of this kind is peculiarly necessary
to the maintenance and prosperity of the American communities, and it is
held by them in peculiar honor and estimation; to betray a want of it is
to incur certain disgrace.
I have yet another characteristic point which may serve to place the
idea of this chapter in stronger relief. In a democratic society like
that of the United States, where fortunes are scanty and insecure,
everybody works, and work opens a way to everything: this has changed
the point of honor quite round, and has turned it against idleness.
I have sometimes met in America with young men of wealth, personally
disinclined to all laborious exertion, but who had been compelled to
embrace a profession. Their disposition and their fortune allowed them
to remain without employment; public opinion forbade it, too imperiously
to be disobeyed. In the European countries, on the contrary, where
aristocracy is still struggling with the flood which overwhelms it, I
have often seen men, constantly spurred on by their wants and desires,
remain in idleness, in order not to lose the esteem of their equals; and
I have known them submit to ennui and privations rather than to work.
No one can fail to perceive that these opposite obligations are two
different rules of conduct, both nevertheless originating in the notion
of honor.
What our forefathers designated as honor absolutely was in reality only
one of its forms; they gave a generic name to what was only a species.
Honor therefore is to be found in democratic as well as in aristocratic
ages, but it will not be difficult to show that it assumes a different
aspect in the former. Not only are its injunctions different, but we
shall shortly see that they are less numerous, less precise, and that
its dictates are less rigorously obeyed. The position of a caste is
always much more peculiar than that of a people. Nothing is so much out
of the way of the world as a small community invariably composed of the
same families (as was for instance the aristocracy of the Middle
Ages), whose object is to concentrate and to retain, exclusively and
hereditarily, education, wealth, and power amongst its own members. But
the more out of the way the position of a community happens to be, the
more numerous are its special wants, and the more extensive are its
notions of honor corresponding to those wants. The rules of honor will
therefore always be less numerous amongst a people not divided into
castes than amongst any other. If ever any nations are constituted in
which it may even be difficult to find any peculiar classes of society,
the notion of honor will be confined to a small number of precepts,
which will be more and more in accordance with the moral laws adopted
by the mass of mankind. Thus the laws of honor will be less peculiar and
less multifarious amongst a democratic people than in an aristocracy.
They will also be more obscure; and this is a necessary consequence
of what goes before; for as the distinguishing marks of honor are less
numerous and less peculiar, it must often be difficult to distinguish
them. To this, other reasons may be added. Amongst the aristocratic
nations of the Middle Ages, generation succeeded generation in vain;
each family was like a never-dying, ever-stationary man, and the state
of opinions was hardly more changeable than that of conditions. Everyone
then had always the same objects before his eyes, which he contemplated
from the same point; his eyes gradually detected the smallest details,
and his discernment could not fail to become in the end clear and
accurate. Thus not only had the men of feudal times very extraordinary
opinions in matters of honor, but each of those opinions was present to
their minds under a clear and precise form.
This can never be the case in America, where all men are in constant
motion; and where society, transformed daily by its own operations,
changes its opinions together with its wants. In such a country men
have glimpses of the rules of honor, but they have seldom time to fix
attention upon them.
But even if society were motionless, it would still be difficult to
determine the meaning which ought to be attached to the word "honor." In
the Middle Ages, as each class had its own honor, the same opinion
was never received at the same time by a large number of men; and this
rendered it possible to give it a determined and accurate form, which
was the more easy, as all those by whom it was received, having a
perfectly identical and most peculiar position, were naturally disposed
to agree upon the points of a law which was made for themselves alone.
Thus the code of honor became a complete and detailed system, in which
everything was anticipated and provided for beforehand, and a fixed
and always palpable standard was applied to human actions. Amongst a
democratic nation, like the Americans, in which ranks are identified,
and the whole of society forms one single mass, composed of elements
which are all analogous though not entirely similar, it is impossible
ever to agree beforehand on what shall or shall not be allowed by the
laws of honor. Amongst that people, indeed, some national wants do exist
which give rise to opinions common to the whole nation on points of
honor; but these opinions never occur at the same time, in the same
manner, or with the same intensity to the minds of the whole community;
the law of honor exists, but it has no organs to promulgate it.
The confusion is far greater still in a democratic country like France,
where the different classes of which the former fabric of society was
composed, being brought together but not yet mingled, import day by day
into each other's circles various and sometimes conflicting notions
of honor--where every man, at his own will and pleasure, forsakes one
portion of his forefathers' creed, and retains another; so that, amidst
so many arbitrary measures, no common rule can ever be established, and
it is almost impossible to predict which actions will be held in honor
and which will be thought disgraceful. Such times are wretched, but they
are of short duration.
As honor, amongst democratic nations, is imperfectly defined, its
influence is of course less powerful; for it is difficult to apply
with certainty and firmness a law which is not distinctly known. Public
opinion, the natural and supreme interpreter of the laws of honor, not
clearly discerning to which side censure or approval ought to lean,
can only pronounce a hesitating judgment. Sometimes the opinion of the
public may contradict itself; more frequently it does not act, and lets
things pass.
The weakness of the sense of honor in democracies also arises from
several other causes. In aristocratic countries, the same notions of
honor are always entertained by only a few persons, always limited in
number, often separated from the rest of their fellow-citizens. Honor is
easily mingled and identified in their minds with the idea of all
that distinguishes their own position; it appears to them as the chief
characteristic of their own rank; they apply its different rules with
all the warmth of personal interest, 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 lawbooks on the subject of
"trial by battel." The nobles, in their disputes, were bound to use
the lance and sword; whereas the villains used only sticks amongst
themselves, "inasmuch as," to use the words of the old books, "villains
have no honor." 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 honor is most
predominant, its injunctions are usually most strange; so that the
further it is removed from common reason the better it is obeyed; whence
it has sometimes been inferred that the laws of honor were strengthened
by their own extravagance. The two things indeed originate from the
same source, but the one is not derived from the other. Honor 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 honor is not the stronger for being fantastical, but
it is fantastical and strong from the selfsame cause.
Further, amongst 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 amidst other men who are bound by
the same ties. Amongst 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 honor will be there less
imperious and less stringent; for honor 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 the
inequality of social conditions and what has here been styled honor--a
relation which, if I am not mistaken, had not before been clearly
pointed out. I shall therefore make one more attempt to illustrate it
satisfactorily. Suppose a nation stands apart from the rest of mankind:
independently of certain general wants inherent in the human race, it
will also have wants and interests peculiar to itself: certain opinions
of censure or approbation forthwith arise in the community, which are
peculiar to itself, and which are styled honor by the members of that
community. Now suppose that in this same nation a caste arises, which,
in its turn, stands apart from all the other classes, and contracts
certain peculiar wants, which give rise in their turn to special
opinions. The honor of this caste, composed of a medley of the peculiar
notions of the nation, and the still more peculiar notions of the caste,
will be as remote as it is possible to conceive from the simple and
general opinions of men.
Having reached this extreme point of the argument, I now return. When
ranks are commingled and privileges abolished, the men of whom a nation
is composed being once more equal and alike, their interests and wants
become identical, and all the peculiar notions which each caste styled
honor successively disappear: the notion of honor no longer proceeds
from any other source than the wants peculiar to the nation at large,
and it denotes the individual character of that nation to the world.
Lastly, if it be allowable to suppose that all the races of mankind
should be commingled, and that all the peoples of earth should
ultimately come to have the same interests, the same wants,
undistinguished from each other by any characteristic peculiarities,
no conventional value whatever would then be attached to men's actions;
they would all be regarded by all in the same light; the general
necessities of mankind, revealed by conscience to every man, would
become the common standard. The simple and general notions of right and
wrong only would then be recognized in the world, to which, by a natural
and necessary tie, the idea of censure or approbation would be
attached. Thus, to comprise all my meaning in a single proposition,
the dissimilarities and inequalities of men gave rise to the notion of
honor; that notion is weakened in proportion as these differences are
obliterated, and with them it would disappear.