Code of honor

“ Pate, who ever heard of the code of honor among the heathen Greeks or Romans, or among any other heathens, ancient or modern? Christians are the only duelists. The custom originated with the knights who fought for the Cross and against the Crescent. It has been the favorite mode of settling difficulties, among gentlemen in Christian countries, ever since. Yes, sir; and even churchmen have fought duels. A parson, in one of our Southern States, once challenged a layman, and shot him through the heart in accordance with the code of honor. ”

“ But honor is of a very diverse character. There is honor among gentlemen, and honor among thieves; and though both these codes contain several excellent enactments, neither can fairly claim to be regarded as a perfect system of morality. Of that code in which he had been educated, colonel Moore was a strict observer. To have made an attempt on the chastity of a neighbor's wife or daughter, he would have esteemed, and so the honorary code of Virginia esteems it, an offence of the blackest dye ”

“ Those codes came out of the folkways of the time and place. Then comes the question whether it is not always so. Is honor, in any case, anything but the code of one's duty to himself which he has accepted from the group in which he was educated? Family, class, religious sect, school, occupation, enter into the social environment. In every environment there is a standard of honor. When a man thinks that he is acting most independently, on his personal prerogative, he is at best only balancing against each other the different codes in which he has been educated, e.g. ”

“ Whenever you are applied to by a friend to act as his second, before you agree to do so, state distinctly to your principal that you will be governed only by your own judgment,—that he will not be consulted after you are in full possession of the facts, unless it becomes necessary to make or accept the amende honorable, or send a challenge. You are supposed to be cool and collected, and your friend's feelings are more or less irritated. ”

“ If a stranger wishes you to bear a note for him, be well satisfied before you do so, that he is on an equality with you; and in presenting the note state to the party the relationship you stand towards him, and what you know and believe about him; for strangers are entitled to redress for wrongs, as well as others, and the rules of honor and hospitality should protect him. ”

“ And I say that our sense of honor is the most precious thing we've got. It's our duty to respect our institutions and obey the law whether we like it or not, unless it conflicts with our conscience, in which case we ought to defy it and take the consequences! ”

“ If these notions could be verified, and if they proved true, no discussion of them would be in place here, but as to honor it is a well-known and undisputed fact that societies have set codes of honor and standards of it which were arbitrary, irrational, and both individually and socially inexpedient, as ample experiment has proved. These codes have been and are imperative, and they have been accepted and obeyed by great groups of men who, in their own judgment, did not believe them sound. ”

“ I said nothing of a private clue, sahib, nor of a clue at all, nor of my rights. I said that I had an idea, and a good one, that I could best carry out alone. All the rights I claim are the right to be treated as a man of honor. ”

“ Sirs, all that seems least connected with honor, as we approach the vulgar days of the present, has its origin in honor, and is but an abuse of its principles. If men nowadays are hucksters and traders, if even military honors are purchased, and a rogue buys his way to a peerage, still all arises from the desire for honor, which society, as it grows old, gives to the outward signs of titles and gold, instead of, as once, to its inward essentials,—courage, truth, justice, enterprise. Therefore I say, sirs, that honor is the foundation of all improvement in mankind. ”

“ Like a college honorary degree, it is perpetual, unless rescinded. So it is proper, where desired, to include in the published list of honorary officers the names of all upon whom the honor has been conferred, even though deceased. ”

“ What habits are to the individual man, that, to a nation, are its Traditions. They are the memories of the Past turned into the standards of the Present. High traditions go to form a code of honour, which speaks with authority to the sense of honour. Whoever transgresses that code is felt to be unworthy of the nation, unfit to hold that place in its respect and confidence which the great ones of the days of old have held. ”

“ What true honor consists in, what constitutes an offense to one's honor and how the offended honor can or should be vindicated or restored, are questions which in different places and at different times have received different answers, according to the different conventional conceptions of honor or the different states of civilization there and then prevailing. ”

“ This institution embraced the whole body of officers belonging to the army and navy, both French and Americans. The right of admitting as honorary members persons of eminence of any nation was also assumed. This adoption of honorary members gave the right only of partaking present munificence, and the enjoyment of the honor during their own lives, however they might have been distinguished in name or character. ”

“ NATIONAL HONOR
BY CARL SCHURZ
The honor of a person, in the general sense of the term, is his moral dignity. To offend or wound a person's honor means to deny or impeach his moral dignity so as to lower it in the estimation of others, and perhaps also in his own self-respect. To forfeit one's honor means to do something, or to permit something to be done, which is incompatible with one's moral dignity. ”

“ By the demands upon its members contained in the group standard of honor the group preserves its unified character and its distinctness from the other groups within the same inclusive association. The essential thing is the specific idea of honor in narrow groups—family honor, officers' honor, mercantile honor, yes, even the "honor among thieves." Since the individual belongs to various groups, the individual may, at the same time, be under the demands of several sorts of honor which are independent of each other. ”

“ In the executive action of these three sorts of law the intermediate position of honor also shows itself. While civic law employs physical force as its sanction, while personal morality has no other recourse than the approval or disapproval of conscience, the laws of honor are guarded by penalties which have neither the pure externality of the former nor the pure subjectivity of the latter. ”

“ It is a reminder of the duty of moral self-preservation, such as physical pain is in respect to physical self-preservation.
Let us take the most undoubted case, an attack on one’s honor, and the profession in which it is most sensitively developed—the military profession. An officer who has patiently borne an insult which involves his honor is no longer an officer. Why? The vindication of his honor is every man’s duty. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This is the statement that you and I as workers for peace are constantly called upon to refute.
Let us, therefore, consider what honor is. For centuries honor was maintained and justice determined among men by a strong arm and a skillfully used weapon. It mattered not that often the guilty won and the dishonorable succeeded. Death was the arbiter, honor was appeased, and men were satisfied. ”

“ Hence, there are three main kinds of honor, each of which takes various forms--civic honor, official honor, and sexual honor.
_Civic honor_ has the widest sphere of all. It consists in the assumption that we shall pay unconditional respect to the rights of others, and, therefore, never use any unjust or unlawful means of getting what we want. It is the condition of all peaceable intercourse between man and man ”

“ In a complex and civilized form of society, such as our own, there may be many such laws of honour, and the same individual may be subject to several of them. Thus each profession, the army, the navy, the clerical, the legal, the medical, the artistic, the dramatic profession, has its own peculiar code of honour or rules of professional etiquette, which its members can only infringe on pain of ostracism, or, at least, of loss of professional reputation. ”

“ In a secondary sense, the command to honor father and mother implies the honor due by wards to their guardians, in case the parents are deceased. In a wider sense, it means to honor the king or magistrates, since these provide for the common good, as parents do for the good of their children. By this commandment, in the widest sense, is meant, that men should love their country, because this nourishes and protects them. ”

“ In regard to the actions of individuals there is rarely much room for discussion whether they be honorable or dishonorable, the standard of honor in men’s conduct being, among the civilized, uniform, well understood, and undisputed. ”

“ And, after all, it was added, even that evil is not to be laid to the charge of the law of honour as a necessary accompaniment, since, if all persons adhered constantly to the rules of good society, there would never be occasion for a duel; in the same manner as there would never be occasion, if all men would comply with the law of the land, for any of the penalties of the law to be actually inflicted. ”

“ Honor, therefore, has its supreme laws, to which education is obliged to conform. The chief of these are, that we are permitted to set a value upon our fortune, but are absolutely forbidden to set any upon our lives. ”

“ Even the code of honour, which is a little out of shape nowadays, is based on Christianity, and was once the rule of a good life, the best rule in the days when it grew up."
"I daresay. Even the code of honour, degenerate as it is, and twist it how you will, cannot give you an excuse for killing yourself when you have always behaved honourably, or for running away from the enemy simply because you are tired of fighting and will not take the trouble to go on."
"Perhaps you are right," Guido answered. ”

“ Monsieur, when one has the honor to be a magistrate—when one has accepted the mission of judging one's fellows, one is bound more than all others to observe temperance and to consider one's dignity in all things. What may not affect the honor of the private citizen does affect the honor of the judge. ”

“ But in bestowing honor, while one should have at least in general an honorable opinion of others, the duty of external honor does not oblige at all times or in all circumstances; and the same kind of honor is not to be given by or to all persons. Those who show the ordinary signs of charity (as they should) in greetings, salutations, courtesies, and the like, comply sufficiently with the duty of common honor. ”

“ The ambitious man grasps at it, as being necessary to his designs; the vain man sues for it, as a testimony of his merit; the honest man demands it, as his due; and most men consider it as necessary to their existence.
Honour, being produced after the formation of society, could not be a part of the common deposite, and therefore, whilst we act under its influence, we return, for that instant, to a state of nature, and withdraw ourselves from the laws, which, in this case, are insufficient for our protection. ”

“ But since, sir, the preference due to the cider of my county has been denied, in my opinion, with great partiality and injustice, I think myself obliged, by all the laws of honour and gratitude, to stand up once more to vindicate its superiority, and assert its value.
The laws of honour, sir, require this from me, as they oblige every man to stand forth a vindicator of merit slighted and oppressed; and gratitude calls loudly upon me to exert myself in the protection of that to which I have been often indebted for a pleasing suspense of care, and a welcome flow of spirit and gaiety. ”

“ Honor differs from reverence as the effect differs from the cause, or the means from the end; for it is reverence that prompts one to show honor, and honor is meant to excite in others reverence for the person honored. The debt of honor is due those who are superior in jurisdiction, from legal justice; it is due to those who are superiors, but not in jurisdiction, not from legal justice, since the law does not enforce it, but from moral obligation, since it is decent and becoming. ”

“ In the British House of Lords, when the peers sit to try another peer on a criminal charge or at an impeachment, on the question being put whether the accused be guilty or not, each peer, rising in his place in turn, lays his right hand on his breast and returns his verdict “upon my honour.” As a title of address, “his honour” or “your honour” is applied in the United States of America to all judges, in the United Kingdom only to county court judges. ”

“ Is any definition of privilege implied? Define honor as taught in a college and honor as taught in the business world. Can a State University afford to maintain the kind of honor that forces it to "remain loyal to unpopular causes and painful truths"? Is the honor that seeks "to maintain faith even with the devil" foolish? Write a report on the state of honor in your college or university such as Washington or Lincoln would have written after investigating conditions in the student politics of the institution, or conditions in examinations and quizzes. ”

“ And you, most honourable and magnificent lords, the worthy and revered magistrates of a free people, permit me to offer you in particular my duty and homage. If there is in the world a station capable of conferring honour on those who fill it, it is undoubtedly that which virtue and talents combine to bestow, that of which you have made yourselves worthy, and to which you have been promoted by your fellow-citizens. ”

“ And does his honour oblige him to be a knave too, or to desert those that are knaves? Or, does a robber, who leaves the gang, violate his honour, which was only an obligation to rob?
A good conscience, an honest heart, and clean hands, are inseparable from true honour; nor does true honour teach any man to act against his judgment. It must be convinced before it acts, and mere authority has no weight with it. In human matters, it does not consider what is commanded, but what ought to be commanded ”