Honor system

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A theory which every man understands in his own way. My father tells me: 'Honor is the respect of that which is due to others, and particularly of what is due to one's self.' But Guiche and Manicamp, and Saint-Aignan particularly, would say to me: 'What's honor? Honor consists in studying and yielding to the passions and pleasures of one's king.' Honor such as that indeed, is easy and productive enough. With honor like that I can keep my post at the court, become a gentleman of the chamber, and accept the command of a regiment, which may have been presented to me. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Those repeated injunctions of honor are to be the rule, subject to these exceptions, which transcend the common proprieties when the subject is the rising young gentleman of the period and his goal social success. ”

“ Give it to them! [DE LAUNEY, DE FLUE, and the Swiss Guards go out into the other court.]
VINTIMILLE [meditates with an ironical smile. A few steps from him, the Pensioners are guarding the cannon.] Our evil conscience! The corporal thinks he has a right to a conscience! He's richer than I. Conscience! It is neither good nor bad. It simply does not exist. Honor, yes. Honor? Under the late King, honor consisted in scheming for him to take one's wife or sister—provided they were presentable—for a mistress, or else in marrying the titled courtesan—honor! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 crown remains the fountain of honor, and the surroundings which give dignity and majesty to its possessor are cherished and enforced all the more strictly because of the loss of real power in the government. ”

“ To teach a code of honor is one of the main purposes of education; a college cannot say, "We teach academic studies," and throw the responsibility for honor on parents, on preliminary schools, on undergraduate opinion, on each boy's conscience. Honor is taught by the companionship, the standards, the ideals, the talk, the actions of honorable men; it is taught by honoring honorable failure and turning the back on all manner of dishonorable success. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As a rule, a man's official rank implies the particular degree of honor which ought to be paid to him, however much this degree may be modified by the capacity of the masses to form any notion of its importance. Still, as a matter of fact, greater honor is paid to a man who fulfills special duties than to the common citizen, whose honor mainly consists in keeping clear of dishonor.
Official honor demands, further, that the man who occupies an office must maintain respect for it, for the sake both of his colleagues and of those who will come after him. ”

“ What makes ambition virtue?—the sense of honor. But is the sense of honor consistent with a spirit of plunder, or the practice of murder? Can it flow from mercenary motives, or can it prompt to cruel deeds?
The independent views of America have been stated and asserted as the foundation of this address. My Lords, no man wishes for the due dependence of America on this country more than I do. To preserve it, and not confirm that state of independence into which your measures hitherto have driven them, is the object which [121] we ought to unite in attaining. ”

“ When honor here meets with anything noble in our actions, it is either a judge that approves them, or a sophister by whom they are excused.
“It allows of gallantry, when united with the idea of sensible affection, or with that of conquest; this is the reason why we never meet with so strict a purity of morals in monarchies as in republican governments. ”

“ The unalterable custom of this country has attached a certain degree of light consideration to titles of honor which are not supported by considerable fortune; or at least, it calls for the display of such an establishment as may not be conveniently supported by even a comfortable income. ”

“ No subject, in the discussion, or decision of which, essential principles, or the vital interests of any branch of knowledge are concerned, can pass, without exciting interest, before the eyes of the community, and least of all is indifference shown when that sacred principle of honor, the firmest safeguard of all we value, is called in question, or impugned. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What is the rule of honor to be observed by a power so strong and so advantageously situated as this Republic is? Of course, I do not expect it meekly to pocket real insults if they should be offered to it. But, surely, it should not, as our boyish jingoes wish it to do, swagger about among the nations of the world, with a chip on its shoulder, and shaking its fist in everybody's face. Of course, it should not tamely submit to real encroachments upon its rights. ”

“ The temple of honor ought to be seated on an eminence. If it be opened
through virtue, let it be remembered, too, that virtue is never tried but
by some difficulty and some struggle. ”

“ For there is no virtue, the honor and credit for which procures a man more odium than that of justice; and this, because more than any other, it acquires a man power and authority among the common people. ”

“ There is no qualification for government but virtue and wisdom, actual or presumptive. Wherever they are actually found, they have, in whatever state, condition, profession, or trade, the passport of Heaven to human place and honor. Woe to the country which would madly and impiously reject the service of the talents and virtues, civil, military, or religious, that are given to grace and to serve it; and would condemn to obscurity everything formed to diffuse lustre and glory around a state! ”

“ It was pitiful for a person born in a wholesome free atmosphere to listen to their humble and hearty outpourings of loyalty toward their king and Church and nobility; as if they had any more occasion to love and honor king and Church and noble than a slave has to love and honor the lash, or a dog has to love and honor the stranger that kicks him! Why, dear me, any kind of royalty, howsoever modified, any kind of aristocracy, howsoever pruned, is rightly an insult; ”

“ Ritter always rate the quality of honour by the office of the individual? If so, are those who have no office also without honour! My honour is one and indivisible—that which God has implanted within me—the honour of being a man. This honour I esteem more highly than that priestly conceit with which, instead of love, Rome seeks by consecration to inoculate her slaves, and which generally sinks them far below the level of their fellow-men, though they may dream that they are high above them. ”

“ 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. ”